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Canada Backed the Iran War. Now It’s Struggling to Explain Why

A marathon debate in Parliament exposes Ottawa’s incoherence on the conflict

The prime minister’s seat was empty in the House of Commons during the marathon four-hour debate on the Iran war on the evening of March 9. Mark Carney blamed scheduling issues, but it was a notable absence, jumped on by the Conservatives, who claimed he was in hiding.

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The foreign minister, Anita Anand, got the first chance at the empty hot seat instead to try to defend the government’s inconsistencies in its approach to the American and Israeli attack on Iran. Anand did her best with a weak hand, suggesting the core principle at stake for the Liberals was to ensure that Iran never acquired nuclear weapons and stopped acting as a terrorist agent of disruption in the region and the world.

The defence minister, David McGuinty, also got his time in the hot seat. He spoke to emphasize the need for de-escalation of the Iran war, without even sketching a starting point or a plan. He also suggested an optimistic outlook for the Iran war, arguing that the weakening of a repressive regime would open the door to a better future. Note weakening, not all-out regime change.

But is that door truly being opened? The immediate prospects seem very remote, not least as signalled by the ascendancy of Ali Khamenei’s equally hard-line son, Mojtaba, to the leadership of Iran and the regime’s defiant rejection of an American demand for “unconditional” surrender.

The Canadian position on the Iran war is now incoherent. If the original, allegedly “realpolitik,” decision to go all in with the United States and Israel was based on winning favour with the Donald Trump administration, or at least avoiding disfavour, any such win, doubtful in the first place, has now been lost, and we are back in a position where we can join the list of those countries who Secretary of War (truly) Pete Hegseth will say are “clutching their pearls.”

Perhaps the........

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