While the Obama administration grants waivers to Iran’s trading partners to lessen the effectiveness of sanctions, not every country is approaching Iran’s failure to abide by international norms and its proliferation and terrorist activities with the same lack of seriousness.
Calling Iran the “most significant threat to global peace and security” today, Ottawa has announced a suspension of relations. The CBC reported:
Iran is among the world’s worst violators of human rights. It shelters and materially supports terrorist groups,” [Foreign Affairs Minister John] Baird said. In the statement, Baird said Canada has closed its embassy in Iran, effective immediately, and declared personae non gratae all remaining Iranian diplomats in Canada. Those diplomats must leave within five days. All Canadian diplomats have already left Iran. “Canada’s position on the regime in Iran is well known. Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” he said in the statement. The statement cited Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syria and failure to comply with UN resolutions on its nuclear program, and its threats against Israel. The statement also makes reference to Iran’s “blatant disregard” of the Vienna Convention that guarantees the protection of diplomatic personnel…
Pro-democracy activists in Canada renewed calls over the summer for the embassy in Ottawa to be closed. The calls were sparked by a news report that said Iran’s cultural counselor in Ottawa, Hamid Mohammadi, suggested Iranian expatriates should be nurtured to be of service to Iran.
Kudos to Canada which, as with the UN’s anti-Semitic Durban Conference and a host of other issues, has consistently embraced a foreign policy rooted in values and a no-nonsense approach to terrorism. If only President Obama would demonstrate the same seriousness of purpose.
This is a typically gutsy move by the Canadians, whose commitment to peace in the Middle East is well-established. n nIt might be remembered that it was the Canadian Embassy in Tehran that sheltered our diplomats, and managed to smuggle them out of the country and back to Canada, and then to DC, during the first hostage crisis. Their Parliament even met in secret in order to grant our people Canadian citizenship and thus pull off their brilliant coup. n nFinally, it should be noted that the Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, a Conservative no less, is openly gay. n nIn Canada, no one cares. Strange that we continue to do so.
PM Stephen Harper is a real mentsch. What a striking contrast between him and the President of Canada's southern neighbor. Relations between Canada and USA have been rocky lately i.e. the Keystone Pipeline squabble. Imagine the improved relationship between the two nations when, hopefully, Gov. Romney becomes the next American President, especially if the Republican Party wins the Senate and retains control of the House.
Here we must in particular acknowledge our debt to the man driving these Canadian actions, Stephen Harper, who, generally, deeply absorbed what 9/11 taught and who, specifically, has a great feeling of kinship with Israel for her democratic values and understands its fraught position in the Middle East amidst vipers such as Iran, to name only one.
Bravo Canada. An example for the rest of the morally corrupt west. Not diminishing the act of the wonderful statesmen of Canada, it is to be noted that Canada is energy and oil independent. For the rest of the world's disgusting leadership (and people), that is however not an ameliorating factor in their guilt.