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NP View: Iran is no longer a foreign war

A Canadian base was attacked, and the Liberals kept it secret

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Iran committed an act of war against Canada and the Canadian government kept it from the public until it was reported by the media — 10 days later. When asked on Thursday why the fact that an Iranian missile hit a Canadian air base in Kuwait on March 1 was not disclosed, Prime Minister Mark Carney was visibly annoyed. “I’m not the only spokesperson for the government,” he said. The tone is revealing, but the secrecy should be unacceptable to anyone who takes the defence of Canada seriously.

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Carney and his ministers have repeatedly said that Canada will not be involved in the war in Iran, but at no point since March 1, did any of them explain that the Iranians had attacked the Canadian section of the Ali Al-salem Air Base, and how that might inform the government’s reaction.

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Carney himself has taken multiple positions on the war. At first, he declared his support for the American and Israeli strikes on Iran, but that was quickly followed by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand appearing to walk back that support a couple days later.

The day after Anand’s statement, Carney said again that he agreed that attacking Iran was the right thing to do, but regretted that it was not consistent with international law. He also called for an immediate end to the hostilities, which would leave Iran’s murderous Islamist regime in power. And on Tuesday, Carney said that, “We will never participate in Iran,” whereas only a few days before he said “We will always defend Canadians,” and that Canada would “defend our allies.”

So the Liberal government’s position on Iran is that it supports the attack, but objects on both legal and moral grounds. This not a coherent position. Members of the Liberal caucus have expressed disappointment that Carney isn’t outright opposing the war, or that he should have consulted with them first. One wonders whether the prime minister informed his Liberal colleagues that a Canadian based had been hit. Would that change anything, or is the anti-Israeli faction of the party too strong for Canada to recognize that its sovereignty has been challenged in the direct form of a missile?

The threat from Iran is hardly theoretical. In addition to targeting U.S. bases and civilian infrastructure around the Middle East, the Iranian regime has launched missiles at other NATO members, including Turkey and a British base in Cyprus. If this continues, the insistence that Canada will not be involved in the war begins to look less like prudence and more like an abdication of duty and a rejection of the basic responsibilities of the state, both to its own defence and the defence of its allies.

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When it comes to Iran, the government is barely willing to admit there’s a problem. There are potentially hundreds of agents linked to the regime in Canada, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which orchestrates terrorist attacks around the world and is responsible for blowing up a plane full of Canadians in 2020.

Since 2022, immigration officials have suspended the travel visas of 239 people with concerning links to the Iranian regime, and some 32 have been named by the Canada Border Services Agency as being “inadmissible” to Canada. Yet only one has been deported.

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When asked about this at a committee this week, the CBSA’s asylum policy chief, Brett Bush, gave an outrageous answer: “One of the big problems today … is access to flights into Iran.” All that does is prompt the question: why weren’t they deported beforehand?

In a statement to CTV News earlier this week about the threat from Iranian agents in Canada, CSIS said that “a violent extremist attack remains a realistic possibility,” just as it was before the war.

CSIS has also intercepted death threats from Iranian agents against anti-regime dissidents in Canada. In a speech in November, CSIS Director Dan Rogers made the threat from Iran explicit: “We’ve had to re-prioritize our operations to counter the actions of Iranian intelligence services and their proxies who have targeted individuals they perceive as threats to their regime.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a direct threat to Canada, as it is to the rest of the West. This isn’t some foreign war. Canada’s leaders should respond accordingly.

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