Waking up to the recent news that the United States air force had suffered the downing of three F-15 fighter jets did not suggest that America’s much vaunted technological superiority would make quick work of bringing about regime change in Iran. Learning subsequently, however, that the jets had been shot down with American technology—albeit deployed by Kuwait, an ally—really muddied the picture. The more recent news that an errant American strike was likely responsible for the killing of some 160 school girls and many of their teachers destroys any humour in the irony of America’s technological superiority. 

While early in what may prove to be a prolonged conflict, suffering losses from an ally implies that Canada’s support for America’s elimination of Iran’s theocratic and security leadership—as part of a “coalition of the wary” rather than the willing—is probably a wise move. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s support—extended “with regret”—for preventing Iran from securing a nuclear weapon and delivery mechanism, whilst understandable from a purely military point of view, failed to adequately reflect the broader security and economic implications we are now experiencing with each passing day. His more recent acknowledgement that the American-Israeli attack was made without any evidence from the Pentagon or the CIA of an imminent threat to the U.S. or Israel, and without consulting allies or the United Nations, is an implicit recognition that this was—like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—a violation of the UN Charter and, as our prime minister put it in Davos, an extreme example of “the rupture of........

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