Canada has severed diplomatic relations with Iran, a country it decries as “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” and it has done so as part of the Harper government’s re-orienting Canada’s foreign policy to more vigorously back Israel. But it is Israel—which daily clamours for an attack on Iran and threatens to undertake one itself—that is the greatest current threat to world peace and international security.
Canada has withdrawn its diplomats from Tehran and ordered Iran’s out of Canada. Ottawa says it has suspended diplomatic relations because Iran is:
Providing military assistance to the Syrian government;
Refuses to comply with UN resolutions pertaining to its nuclear program;
Routinely threatens the existence of Israel;
Engages in racist anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide;
Is among the world’s worst violators of human rights;
Shelters and materially supports terrorist groups.
Given rampant speculation in Canada about the real reasons Ottawa has suddenly broken off relations with Iran, it’s clear that Ottawa’s purported reasons have been dismissed as empty rhetoric.
And so they should be.
If Ottawa were genuinely concerned about the world’s worst violators of human rights giving military assistance to tyrannical regimes to put down peaceful uprisings, it would have shut its embassy in Saudi Arabia long ago. Human Rights Watch describes rights violations in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that refuses to tolerate meaningful democratic reforms, as “pervasive.” And when Bahrainis rose up in peaceful protest against their country’s despotic rulers last year, Saudi troops and tanks spilled into the country to help Bahrain’s absolute monarchy violently suppress the uprising. Canadian diplomats remain on station in both countries.
The United States refuses to comply with innumerable UN resolutions to lift its illegal blockade on Cuba, and yet Ottawa continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Washington. UN resolutions in connection with the Palestinians are regularly ignored by Israel, but all the same Canadian diplomats are not withdrawn from Tel Aviv.
Indeed, Israel offers multiple reasons for Ottawa to close its embassy in that country and boot Israeli diplomats out of Canada. Human Rights Watch describes conditions in territories occupied by Israel as a “human rights crisis.” Within Israel proper, Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, subordinate to the favoured children, the Jews.
Israel’s record of furnishing military aid to repressive, retrograde regimes is long and shameful. After the Carter administration suspended military aid to the Chilean regime of Augusto Pinochet in 1977, Israel stepped in to become the dictator’s major arms supplier. Israel ran guns to Iran soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, to fan the flames of war between Iran and Iraq, and before that was a major supporter of the Shah’s dictatorial, human rights charnel house. [1] In the 1970s, it entered into a secret military alliance with South Africa’s racist apartheid regime, offering to sell it nuclear weapons.
As for the Canadian government’s professed opposition to nuclear weapons proliferation, Tel Aviv’s nuclear program should be ringing alarm bells in Ottawa. Israel is estimated to have some 200 nuclear weapons. It refuses to hear any discussion about giving them up, won’t join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and bars international inspectors from entering the country.
By contrast, the Iranians have no nuclear weapons—and as US military and intelligence officials continue to affirm—there is no evidence they’re working to acquire them (see here, here, here, here, here, and here.) More than that, there is evidence of absence. “Certain things are not being done,” a former US intelligence official told the Washington Post, that would have to be done were the Iranians working to weaponize their civilian nuclear energy program.
And unlike Israel, Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Its nuclear facilities are regularly scrutinized by international inspectors. And while it is true that Tehran refuses to comply with some UN resolutions related to its civilian nuclear program, it does so because the resolutions would uniquely deny its right to process uranium—a right the non-proliferation treaty guarantees.
And as for supporting terrorists, in the early 1980s Tel Aviv groomed Christian Phalangist right-wing militias to act as Israel’s proconsul in Lebanon. When a bomb killed the Phalanges’ leader Bashir Jumayal, who had been recently elected president, the militias went on a rampage, terrorizing Palestinians and Shiite Lebanese in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. As the Phalanges rampaged through the camps, killing men, women and children, the Israeli army threw up a cordon around the camps, firing flares into the night sky to provide illumination to help the terrorists do their grisly work. [2]
Far worse is the reality that the Israeli state was founded on terrorism. For one thing, Zionists used terrorism to try to drive the British out of mandate Palestine, bombing the King David hotel, headquarters of the British mandate authority, in 1946. But that was small potatoes compared to what was to come. Exhausted, and no longer willing to administer Palestine, the British transferred responsibility to the UN in 1947. Over the objections of the majority Arab inhabitants, the UN developed a partition plan which would allocate 56 percent of mandate Palestine to a Jewish state. Jews made up only one-third of the population. The Arabs, two-thirds of the population, would receive only 42 percent (Jerusalem, the remaining two percent, would become an international city.) The Jewish state would have a rough demographic balance of 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs (the Arab state 800,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews.) Recognizing that a democratic Jewish state could not long exist without a preponderance of Jews, Zionists terrorized Arab villages to depopulate them, sending hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians fleeing for safety. They were later barred from returning. Zionists claim the Arabs fled only to get out of the way of advancing armies from neighbouring Arab states. But the terror, formalized as Plan Dalet, was well underway before the Arab armies intervened. In end, the Zionists seized 80 percent of Palestinian territory, and were only prevented from seizing all of it by the intervention of Egypt and Jordan. [3]
What’s more, Canada might consider its own support for terrorists. Some Canadian military officers who had participated in last year’s NATO air war against the government of Libya referred to NATO jets bombing Gadhafi’s troops as “al-Qaeda’s air force,” a recognition that Islamist terrorists made up part of the opposition that NATO, with Canada’s participation, intervened on behalf of.
As for the Canadian government’s claim that Iran “routinely threatens the existence of Israel,” this is pure wind. Tehran is certainly hostile to Zionism—the idea that European Jewish settlers, through a program of ethnic cleansing, have a legitimate right to found a state on someone else’s land. And there can be little doubt that Iran is ready to do all it can to facilitate the demise of the Zionist regime. But the notion that Iran has the intention—even the capability—to bring about the physical destruction of Israel is absurd in the extreme. Iran is severely outclassed militarily by Israel, and its possession of a handful of nuclear weapons—if it were ever to acquire them—would be no match for Israel’s hundreds, or the formidable military might of Israel’s sponsor, the United States. The idea that Iran threatens Israel is a silly fiction cooked up by Israeli warmongers to justify an attack on Iran to prevent the latter from ever acquiring even the potential to develop nuclear weapons in order to preserve Tel Aviv’s monopoly of nuclear terror in the Middle East. Canadian politicians simply ape the line that Israel is threatened, a canard Zionists have used since 1948 to justify their aggressions. On the contrary, it is Israel—a super-power-sponsored nuclear weapons state—which threatens Iran, to say nothing of Syria and Lebanon.
So why has Ottawa really suspended diplomatic relations with Tehran? Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi says Canada’s government is “neo-conservative”, “extremist”, and “boundlessly defending international Zionism.” These are apt descriptions. Canada has practically outsourced its Middle East foreign policy to Israel, letting it be known that it will unquestioningly prop up Israeli interests. Extremist? Since Ottawa’s outsourcing of Middle East foreign policy to Israel yokes Canada to a bellicose regime with an atrocious human rights record, how could it be otherwise?
But Salehi’s description, no matter how apt, does not explain why Ottawa has severed ties with Iran now.
Former Canadian ambassador to Iran John Mundy raises the possibility that Ottawa is pulling its diplomats out of the country in anticipation of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran. Since Canada has offered unqualified support to Israel, Canadian diplomats would be in danger if Israel followed through on its threats. Britain recalled its diplomats when, last November, protesters stormed the British Embassy in Tehran. Canada may be seeking to avoid a similar occurrence. Ottawa may have no specific knowledge of an impending Israeli strike, but may be playing it safe all the same. Or it might be participating in an Israeli-sponsored ruse to ratchet up psychological pressure on Tehran, withdrawing its diplomats to falsely signal an imminent Israeli strike.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that Canada has adopted the extremist position of supporting a rogue regime in Tel Aviv that, to quote Ottawa’s misplaced description of Iran, is “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”
1. Patrick Seale. Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. University of California Press. 1988.
2. Seale.
3. Ilan Pappe. The Ethnic Cleasning of Palestine. One World. 2006.
What's Left 
The theory that Canada is somehow independently imperialistic doesn’t explain why Canada cares about Israel-Palestine or Iran. Postulating that Canada’s ruling class, or at least its foreign policy, is a satellite of the U.S. ruling class, which it does appear to be behaviorally speaking, does explain it. I certainly wouldn’t disagree that ‘Canada has a coherent capitalist class with a very strong outward orientation, and that Canadian foreign and military policy is driven by those class interests’, but that doesn’t contradict its status as a satellite. The Canadian ruling class doubtless perceives its present interests as best served by subordinate attachment to the U.S. ruling class, a sensible perception given the desires, interests, relations, relative powers, and history of the two groups. If the Canadian government makes bad noises to the Iranian government, the simplest and most likely explanation is that it has been directed to do so by its overlord.
Rather than inundating me with links to other people’s articles, why not start by defining what you mean by imperialism and we can take it from there.
“Canada is a satellite of the US and is complicit in US imperialism, but it is not itself an imperialist country”
This is a pathetic attempt to deny the reality of imperialist Canada–coming from a Canadian “leftist” no less.
Apparently, much of the so-called Canadian Left are basically Canadian imperialists (or nationalists) in Leftist clothing.
See the links I posted for examples of why and how Canada is an imperialist nation–and not merely “complicit” in US imperialism:
Canada’s imperialist project
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/canadae28099s-imperialist-project-capital-and-power-in-canadian-foreign-pol
War and Imperialism, Canadian Style
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/canadian-politics/48364-war-imperialism-canadian-style.html
Here’s another link that reviews Todd Gordon’s seminal work _Imperialist Canada_, which analyzes case studies of Canada’s imperialist predations in Haiti, Afghanistan, as well as Latin American like Columbia–not to mention Canada’s ongoing rape of the Indigineous First Nations within its own borders.
Just as importantly, as the review notes, Gordon “argues that existing ideas — including those of much of the mainstream left and particularly Canadian left-nationalists — don’t enable us to clearly understand Canada’s role in the contemporary neo-liberal world. Gordon argues Canada has a coherent capitalist class with a very strong outward orientation, and that Canadian foreign and military policy is driven by those class interests” and raises the need to “challenge widespread notions that Canadian imperialism is merely a by-product of US imperialism.”
Understanding Canadian Imperialism
http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=499:understanding-canadian-imperialism-&catid=51:analysis&Itemid=98
Further to this is the awkward position the Australian ruling class face with their affiliation to their class brothers[and sisters] in America and the profit driven desire to have good relations with China.Watching this play out on a political/economic stage is an enlightening experience of double speak and political turn-arounds.
Oh what folly of the capitalists with their insatiable greed,They will committee no end of skull duggery all in the name of profit..what else would one expect.?
Perhaps an example of what S Gowans is saying would be Australia,.It is both subservient to the US and is a ”mini ”imperialist state in its own right.It acts as deputy sheriff in the south for the US whilst having colonial ambitions in places like Fiji,new Guinea and Timor.
Canada is a satellite of the US and is complicit in US imperialism, but it is not itself an imperialist country
There’s no question that Canada is a satellite of the United States and that it is dominated economically, culturally and militarily by it. But country A’s being a satellite of country B does not preclude it from dominating country C, so Canada could, in principle, be a both a satellite (dominated by the United States) and imperialist (dominating other countries). Israel is an example of a country that is both dominated (by the United States) but which itself dominates (the Palestinians).
How about Canada? It too is dominated by the United States, but does it dominate other countries? If so, which ones?
To be sure, Canada contributes to propping up and expanding Washington’s informal empire and in doing so its banks and corporations benefit. The doors the United States pries open abroad, the trade and investment rules it enforces, profit Canadian businesses as much as US ones. So, yes, Canada benefits from US imperialism, and contributes to its enforcement.
But does that mean Canada itself dominates other countries? No, but it does mean that Canada is complicit.
That Canada is a satellite of the U.S. isn’t an ‘alibi’, it’s just a fact, which helps explain its recent behavior with respect to Iran.
Replace the “or” with an “and”.
@ Gowans. Are you suggesting that Canada is a so-called “satellite” of the USA? Or that Canada is not a predatory imperialist power in its own right?
@ anarcissie. All this rhetoric about Canada as a “satellite” is a duplicitous alibi that is frequently spouted by Canadian nationalists to pretend that Canada would not be an imperialist nation without the USA–that Canada is deep down a benevolent “peacekeeper” nation whose recurring imperialist crimes are primarily the fault of the United States, which bullied hapless Canada into going along with them.
That is comically self-serving nonsense.
Firstly, Canada is a White colonial settler state. It is fundamentally based on Western colonialism. Ask all the First Nations whose land Canada stole and currently occupies.
Secondly, Canada supports the USA and aligns with its policies out of the belief that it will benefit. It is in Canada’s self-interest to uphold and defend the rapacious policies, wars, and ultimately dominance of the imperialist West in general.
The Canadian ruling class understands something that many Canadian “progressives” or “antiwar activists” attempt to deny: Canada’s wealth, prosperity, and very way of life (i.e. its status as a First World nation) is necessarily premised upon maintaining the unjust world order that America and its allies rule over.
Canada’s imperialist project
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/canadae28099s-imperialist-project-capital-and-power-in-canadian-foreign-pol
War and Imperialism, Canadian Style
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/canadian-politics/48364-war-imperialism-canadian-style.html
I can’t think of an occasion in the last several decades when the ruling class and government of Canada seriously opposed the ruling class and government of the U.S., hence I would categorize Canada as a satellite. The business with Iran struck me as particularly subservient, however. Often, U.S. satellites are permitted to have their little differences which in fact may be useful, for example, Canada took in a lot of Draft resisters and evaders from the U.S. during the war in Vietnam, who otherwise might have stayed in the U.S. and made trouble. Mexico was allowed to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba, leaving open a passageway for dissidents, spies, trade, tourism for the privileged, surveillance, and so on between the U.S. and Cuba. I’m sure other satellite-holders have done the same.
You’ve created a false dichotomy between “satellite” and “predatory imperialist power.”
Canada is not a satellite. That is a political alibi that Canadian nationalists (both “Left” and Right) peddle to disguise the reality that Canada is a predatory imperialist power in its own right.
Indeed, Canada shares much in common with the USA. Namely, it is an Anglo colonizer nation spawned by the British Empire and fundamentally based upon the theft and occupation of First Nations’ lands to this very day.
This reality is disguised behind copious national propaganda about Canada being some kind of “liberal democracy.” But in reality, Canada is an imperialist “democracy,” whose way of life and standard of living are ultimately based upon being part of the imperialist West.
That’s why Canada is a member of NATO and the Western alliance system and has participated in every one of the West’s criminal wars the past decade including the aggression against Afghanistan and Libya, the regime change of Haiti, and even the attack on Iraq, despite not being officially part of the Coalition of the Killing.
This bloody track record belies Canadians’ self-serving delusions that their country is some kind of benevolent “peacekeeping” nation, when it’s clearly never been.
The Most Significant Threat to Global Peace and Security in the World Today is none other than … the American Empire.
Israel is a regional gendarme of this American Empire and is certainly a threat, but in the final analysis, Israel is dependent on Uncle Scam for economic, military, and political support.
Ultimately, it’s America, self-styled “Land of the Free,” that is the preeminent threat to peace.
After all, how many countries has America attacked, invaded, or bombed in the past few years alone?
America has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, as well as currently waging a terrorist proxy war against Syria to name but a few examples.
This is not to mention all the countries that America has attacked historically such as Yugoslavia, Grenada, Iraq (again), Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and a minor “police action” that killed millions in Vietnam and SE Asia.
All told, America, the self-proclaimed “Leader of the Free World,” is a serial aggressor nation that has murdered millions of people around the planet.
The United States is thus an existential threat–one that disguises its true predatory character behind Goebbelsian deceptions like freedom, democracy, and human rights.
My theory is that the Canadian government is a closely subservient satellite of the U.S. and as such has been directed to pull this latest stunt by their handlers in the U.S. The motives of the U.S. are often Byzantine and hard to discern, but one could be a desire to keep Israel, a less subservient satellite, more or less quiet during the election season by throwing them some fresh meat.