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

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.

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 twists and turns of the Carney position will escape the notice of those on the US end of the trade negotiations. We can only hope. What none of us knew when Carney issued his initial full-blast statement of support for the US war was that a renewal of trade talks—stalled since this past October when Trump had his “hissy fit” about Ontario premier Doug Ford’s anti-tariff ads featuring GOP hero Ronald Reagan—was in the cards.

Two things stand out about Carney’s efforts to stick close to the US. One is that we had no business aligning ourselves with a US-led war when we were not consulted in advance, had no insight into US war aims, and no way of independently verifying any claims made by the US about the need to launch this war (e.g. the claims of imminent threats, failure of negotiations over a new nuclear deal, etc.). We just bought the ticket.

The other is that realpolitik turned to realdummkopf in a failure to consider the wider consequences of this war, which should have cooled any enthusiasm.

What was foreseeable in any Iran war was that oil prices would be impacted and that Iran would use the military cards at its disposal—especially its ballistic missiles and drones—to hit back across the region.

Support for the US–Israeli war against Iran carries, in realpolitik terms, a big downside. It’s a win for the Vladimir Putin regime.

Recall where Carney was when the 2003 US-led war against Iraq was looming? He was at the US investment firm Goldman Sachs. What were financial analysts doing at the time? Watching the impact of a coming war on markets and economies, especially oil prices. Some may have been betting on the future markets on a site called “Saddam Securities,” involving predictions about the downfall of the Iraqi dictator.

We’re watching a similar—and entirely predictable—development now, with oil prices spiking. That’s very good news for the Russian war economy, alongside the fact that the US has relaxed its pressure on a major importer of Russian oil, India.

Other good news for the Kremlin? The supply of air defence weapons to Ukraine is likely to be severely hampered by the needs of an expanding Middle East war. More suffering for Ukrainian civilians is ahead.

More distraction from pursuing serious peace negotiations over the Ukraine war is also guaranteed—all beneficial from Moscow’s perspective. The latest from Trump is a replay, once again placing blame on Zelenskyy and suggesting, against all evidence, that Putin is ready for peace. When your mind is elsewhere, you dredge up from auto-memory, so Trump told Politico in an interview that Zelenskyy was the obstacle and that he doesn’t “have the cards . . . Now he’s got even less cards.”

“Double-plus good,” as they say in 1984.

For icing, there is a report in the Washington Post, based on US intelligence sources, that Russia is assisting Iran with targeting intelligence for its missile and drone attacks. Russia has long played the great game in the Middle East, even if it has lost allies in the region with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the diminishment of the power of Iran. It has the covert capacities—on the ground assets, spy satellites, maybe even some signals intelligence—to try to be a spoiler in the fight. It would be payback, of a sort, for Western intelligence aid to Ukraine.

Did we intend to buy a win for Putin? I am sure not. But that is why it is important to think before you place your impulsive bets on war.

• I Was a Prisoner in Iran. I’ve Seen the US Meddle in the Region for Decades
• Eight Experts on What You’re Not Being Told about the War in Iran
• Why Regime Change by Force Is Unlikely to Work in Iran

The Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, made his own position on the war clear. He fully and unequivocally supports the US–Israeli war against Iran because he believes in the necessity of regime change and believes that bringing democracy forward in Iran can only happen if the current hard-line establishment is removed—he didn’t say “decapitated.” This position is sustainable, of course, only if the war aims of the US and Israel are actually devoted to bringing about real regime change in Iran. The Conservatives seem unwilling to entertain any doubts on that point, especially Shuvaloy (“Shuv”) Majumdar, the Conservative member of Parliament for Calgary Heritage, whose stated belief in the ability of Iranians to rise up and seize a historic moment echoed remarks made at the very outset of the war by the US president.

Hope for regime change in Iran hovers over the positions of the two key parties, albeit in different ways. Only what is left of the New Democratic Party, represented in the debate by interim leader Don Davies, completely condemns the war as illegal and rejects the hope that democratic regime change can emerge from it.

Who can deny that the hope of regime change in Iran is estimable, is aching. The reality? As we enter the second week of a war of uncertain duration, even to its chief architect, the US president, the only certainty is that Israel and the United States want to destroy the military power of Iran; kill the political, military, and security force leadership of Iran; and deploy overwhelming force to achieve these aims.

Can they win the war—undoubtedly. Can they win the peace? Does their vision of peace mean a new democratic regime in Tehran or just a new and subservient regime?

There is no real indication that Israel and the United States are devoted to democratic regime change in Iran or have any plan to make it happen. Building a capable democratic regime out of a landscape of ruin rained from above is even less likely than building a capable democratic regime, without consistent international support and years of political development, from the entrails of a theocratic/military dictatorship that has been in power for forty-seven years.

There is one MP in the House, the sole surviving representative of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, who rejects what she sees as the false choice between embracing regime change through an illegal war or abandoning the Iranian people.

May fervently believes that the US–Israeli war against Iran must be condemned as illegal and replaced by a return to diplomacy, while hoping that the aspirations of the Iranian people for a better life can be achieved. That principled path is, in the present construction of Canadian politics, a lonely one and seemingly the furthest from the designs of the belligerents.

Adapted from “The Iran War Debate” by Wesley Wark (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.