Smoke billows over Tehran behind the Azadi Tower amid Israeli and US bombardment. Photo by Davoid Ghahrdar.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran. In less than a week, the illegal strikes killed more than 1,000 Iranians. In addition to military installations, the bombings have hit Iranian heritage sites, civilian and energy infrastructure, police stations, and border guard posts.

The attacks destroyed an elementary school in southern Iran, killing 165 children. A New York Times investigation suggested that the US military was responsible for the school bombing, while Al Jazeera found that the massacre of was likely “deliberate.” Meanwhile, the CIA has revealed plans to arm Iranian Kurds against the Islamic Republic government in an apparent attempt to stoke ethnic conflict. The illegal US-Israeli strikes have also risked igniting a broader regional war—precisely the outcome that Iran’s assassinated leader, Ali Khamenei, had warned they would provoke.

Interim NDP leader Don Davies has condemned the war. The Communist Party and the Greens have done so as well.

Yet the war has received broad support from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who initially endorsed the US-Israeli strikes and, despite later acknowledging they appear inconsistent with international law, has refused to rule out Canadian participation.

Looking like a ‘lapdog of US hegemony’

The same day the strikes began, Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand published a joint statement declaring Canadian support for the war: “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” The statement also “reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure the security of its people.”

According to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, UN member states have the right to self-defence only “if an armed attack occurs against a Member.” Iran did not launch an armed attack against either Israel or the United States. That makes the US-Israeli strikes an act of aggression rather than self-defence. Under this framework, the right to self-defence would belong to Iran—the country subjected to the attack—not to the states that carried it out.

Amid criticism from within the Liberal caucus, Carney doubled down on his support for the war several days later. The prime minister acknowledged that the US-Israeli attack violated international law but said he supported it nonetheless, albeit “with regret.”

Only later did Carney attempt to frame his position in the language of international law, offering a vague defence of the “rules-based international order” while still refusing to condemn either Washington or Tel Aviv for launching the strikes. The result was a familiar form of Canadian diplomacy: invoking international law in the abstract while declining to apply it to the actions of allies.

This is a striking stance from a head of government who made international headlines in January for his spirited defence of international law and global cooperation at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Canada’s Defence Minister David McGuinty has effectively endorsed the assassination of Khamenei, describing the late Iranian leader as a “force for evil.” Needless to say, the assassination of foreign heads of state is a clear violation of state sovereignty and the prohibition on the use of force.

On March 4, Carney went further. He stated that Canada could not “rule out participation” in the war against Iran—a war which the prime minister himself admitted was illegal. “We will stand by our allies,” he said.

In January 2026, Trump adviser Stephen Miller dismissed the concept of international law as mere “niceties.” Miller said: “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”

By openly supporting a war that he acknowledges is illegal, Carney has tacitly endorsed the Trump administration’s “might makes right” worldview.

Since the February 28 attack, peace activists across Canada have organized emergency anti-war rallies—in Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and many smaller cities.

Candice Bodnaruk, a member of Peace Alliance Winnipeg who helped organize an anti-war rally on March 1, told Canadian Dimension: “Canadians do not support this war. A March 3 Angus Reid poll reported that 49 percent of Canadians oppose this war, while only 34 percent support it. Canadians do not want to see Canada supporting an illegal war on Iran—they want money spent at home on social programs.”

There are currently 200 Canadian Armed Forces members stationed in the Middle East. At the time of the US-Israeli strikes, 18 military personnel were serving on exchange at US bases in Bahrain and Qatar. The Department of National Defence denies that any Canadians assisted in the planning or execution of Operation Epic Fury. Regardless, Ottawa has instructed these soldiers to remain embedded with US forces as the Trump administration wages its illegal campaign.

CODEPINK Ontario organizers Anne Kamath and Umer Azad argued that “Ottawa habitually responds to US-led aggression, whether in Venezuela, Palestine, or now Iran, with abstract calls for de-escalation while pointedly refusing to name the United States as the aggressor or condemn its actions as illegal.” Carney’s statement on Iran, however, represents a dangerous escalation:

It moves from passive silence to active endorsement. By explicitly backing what he called the “US-Israeli” military action, Carney abandoned even the pretense of defending a rules-based international order. His Davos rhetoric about international law is now exposed as purely performative, a set of principles to be invoked against states like Venezuela or Iran but suspended the moment a US administration or Israel decides to violate them.

The organizers note that these strikes, in addition to violating international law, are also illegal under US domestic law and are highly unpopular with the American public.

“By aligning with the strikes anyway,” they said, “Canada projected weakness, tied itself to a deeply controversial action even many Americans questioned, and undermined its own credibility on the rules-based international order it claims to defend. Mark Carney appeared like a total lapdog of US hegemony.”

Not all Western governments have supported the US-Israeli military action. In the aftermath of the bombing, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez evicted US military personnel from Spain’s airbases. Sánchez condemned the attack as “unjustifiable” and “dangerous,” stating that “the world cannot solve its problems with conflicts and bombs.”

“It’s not too late,” said Bodnaruk. “Canada could redeem itself and stand on the right side of history by condemning Israel and the US.”

Mark Carney speaks at Australian Parliament House on March 5, 2026. Photo courtesy Mark Carney/Facebook.

Regime change or regime collapse?

Taken together—the wide range of US-Israeli targets, including political leaders, the military, police, border services, schools, and other civilian infrastructure, along with reported efforts to provoke ethnic conflict—suggests a strategy aimed at collapsing Iranian society. Such an outcome would be catastrophic for Iran and the region. It would also remove Iran as a supporter of Palestinian resistance and as a challenger to US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East—an outcome Washington and Tel Aviv appear willing to accept.

Trump, who plans to increase military spending to $1.5 trillion, is seeking emergency funding to support the destruction of Iran. Democrats have already expressed their willingness to support the war effort. Meanwhile, some US and Israeli officials are openly referring to their war on Iran as a religious conflict.

Danny Citrinowicz of Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies described the Israeli government’s aims this way: “If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn’t care less about the future [or] the stability of Iran.”

As former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy said: “Israel’s more interested in regime and state collapse. They want Iran to implode.”

In December 2025, The Jakarta Method author Vincent Bevins wrote about the concept of “regime collapse” in US foreign policy. Bevins initially used the term to describe Washington’s campaign against Venezuela, but today it appears even more applicable to Iran.

“The upside of pursuing destruction, for contemporary imperialists,” Bevins wrote, “is that if you fail to engender collapse, at least you weaken.”

The US-Israeli war on Iran is a regional and global disaster—a human failure of gargantuan proportions. It represents the exportation of the murderous Gaza playbook, with all its theocratic tendencies, ethnonationalism, and bloodlust, to a nation of more than 90 million people.

I wrote about Venezuela https://t.co/yQXtMVGL7j— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) October 22, 2025

I wrote about Venezuela https://t.co/yQXtMVGL7j

Not an innocent bystander

Carney’s backing of the February 28 attack echoes his support for the June 2025 US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Like the current attacks, the so-called “12 Day War” was unprovoked and premised on false claims, yet Carney and his government affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.

At the time, Carney stated: “Iran’s nuclear program has long been a cause of grave concern, and its missile attacks across Israel threaten regional peace… Canada reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure its security. We call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint.” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand similarly emphasized de-escalation and Canada’s preference for a negotiated solution.

One might ask: why are victims of unprovoked attacks expected to “exercise maximum restraint,” while aggressors are framed as defending themselves? These linguistic contortions and selective emphases are consistent with broader patterns in Canadian foreign policy, not just under Carney.

As Kamath and Azad wrote last month, the Canadian government has long refused to name responsibility for criminal actions and human rights violations committed by the US and its allies—including Canada itself.

“Canada has perfected the art of tactful bystanding,” they argue, “present in language, absent in consequence.”

Speaking to Canadian Dimension, the CODEPINK organizers reiterated:

Carney’s Davos speech was a warning about the collapse of the rules-based order, but it was a fundamentally dishonest warning because it erased Canada’s own complicity in that collapse. He spoke as if this order were being destroyed by abstract forces or distant autocrats, when in reality Canada and its allies have been actively dismantling it for years through the illegal invasion of Iraq, the endorsement of coups in Latin America, and most infamously through the material and diplomatic support for the genocide in Gaza.

Carney’s support for an illegal war on Iran is simply the latest expression of Canada’s long-standing willingness to sideline international law and global cooperation in favour of US-led unilateralism aimed at preserving Western power and privilege.

This is not a new trend.

In 1999, Canada participated in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which was not authorized by the UN Security Council. Four years later, Ottawa offered hushed but substantial support for the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2011, Canada violated key tenets of international law and UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973 to wage war on Libya (as detailed in my new book Targeting Libya).

One can also point to the long history of Canadian support for coups against elected governments deemed inconvenient by imperial interests—Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and others.

Canada’s indifference to international law has been demonstrated most starkly during Israel’s destruction of Gaza.

The world’s highest court labelled Israel’s assault a plausible genocide. A UN Commission concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in the Strip. The world’s leading association of genocide scholars and numerous human rights organizations reached similar conclusions. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council repeatedly voted for a ceasefire only to see the measure vetoed by the US.

Throughout this period, Canada continued shipping military goods to Israel while repressing anti-genocide protests domestically. At the time of writing, Canada continues to funnel arms to Israel through the US and manufacture parts for Israeli F-35 variants—the same aircraft that decimated Gaza and are now being used in the bombing of Iran.

After coming to power preaching independence from Washington and defending international law, Carney has now supported two wars of aggression against Iran, backed the bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its UN-recognized head of state, continued Canadian military goods shipments to the Israeli military, and responded to Washington’s brutal and illegal siege of Cuba with silence.

While Carney complains about threats to international law, he is actively aiding in its dismantling.

As Bodnaruk put it: “We cannot be a country that claims to stand up for human rights while remaining silent or standing on the side of the aggressor.”

Aftermath of an airstrike in Tehran, March 3, 2026. Photo by Mostafa Tehrani/Tasnim News Agency.

Unlike Israel, Iran has no nuclear weapons. Nor is there any evidence that Iran’s government was planning to develop them.

Nevertheless, Western politicians and media have repeatedly claimed that Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons since 1984. The Christian Science Monitor has compiled decades of such “warnings,” all of which ultimately proved false. Canadian media has long been complicit in amplifying these claims.

In 2003, Khamenei issued a religious fatwa forbidding the production of nuclear weapons. Six years later, the US Foreign Relations Committee reported: “There is no sign that Iran’s leaders have ordered up a bomb.”

In March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003.”

In the lead-up to recent US-Iran negotiations, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran had no interest “at all” in developing nuclear weapons, while the Iranian foreign ministry described claims to the contrary as “big lies.”

On February 27, Iranian negotiators agreed to “zero stockpiling” of nuclear material, a key US demand. The foreign minister of Oman, which was mediating the talks, stated: “I believe Iran is open to discuss everything.”

The next day, the US and Israel launched their war of aggression.

This conflict is pure imperial politics—based on false pretexts and a disregard for international law, cooperation, or negotiation. For the second time in under a year, Iran was signalling willingness to make concessions when it was bombed, and for the second time, US allies—including Canada—lined up in support.

Given Canada’s long record of aligning with US and Israeli militarism, Carney’s backing of the war comes as no surprise.

Owen Schalk is the author of Targeting Libya: How Canada went from building public works to bombing an oil-rich country and creating chaos for its citizens, an exploration of Canada’s pivotal yet little-known role in Libya’s history, now available from Lorimer Books.

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