Broken beyond repair: Why Canada and Iran won’t re-open their embassies any time soon
This year marks 40 years since the Iranian revolution, and the birth of the Islamic Republic — as well as 40 years of a fraught relationship with the West. Canada has been no exception. It’s been adversarial from the beginning: Canada organized the escape of six American diplomats from Iran during the hostage crisis in 1980. It had no embassy in Iran for eight years afterwards.
Things haven’t improved since. The relationship between Ottawa and Tehran took another serious hit in 2003, when Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, was murdered in an Iranian prison. Iranian authorities claimed at first her death was accidental. But an Iranian doctor, Shahram Azam, admitted later that he had treated Kazemi in hospital. He said it was clearly evident she had suffered horrific abuse — rape, floggings and beatings.
Today, Canada and Iran again have no official relations. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government closed the embassy for a second time in 2012, citing security concerns. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals promised a different approach. They wanted to re-engage with Iran, and re-open the embassy. They even lifted some sanctions after the 2015 nuclear deal was signed. But after more than three years in power, diplomatic talks have stalled. The Liberals even backed a Conservative motion in June calling on the government to abandon its plans to restore diplomatic relations. Many wondered: why are Canada and Iran so unable to resolve their differences?
Unfortunately for Iran, the Canadian government is unlikely to try again to restore ties anytime in the near future. The Conservatives have several political and ideological reasons to oppose re-engagement, and the number of obstacles for the Liberal party are just as many: the 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, the continued imprisonment of Iranian-Canadians, inappropriate behaviour from the previous Iranian embassy and divides within both the Liberal party and the Iranian diaspora. That’s despite Iran’s continued adherence to the nuclear deal, and the proponents of re-engagement, who say an embassy would help resolve consular disputes.
For some experts who consider Iran to be a malign influence, Canada’s approach has been the right one. “Iran has made the political choice to act in ways inimical to Western interests, both our values and political interests,” says Elliot Tepper, an expert in international affairs at Carleton University, who is now retired. “That choice, unfortunately, leaves them in a pariah state status.”
Tepper’s position mirrors Harper’s. As University of Ottawa Iran expert Thomas Juneau describes in his paper “A story of failed re-engagement,” the previous Conservative government genuinely believed that Canada has a duty to defend Israel’s democracy, and oppose Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism.
Initially, the Conservatives continued a policy started by Paul Martin’s government after the Kazemi incident. Millersville University’s Robert J. Bookmiller describes it as, “Controlled engagement.” In his paper of the same name, Bookmiller said Martin’s government limited talks with Iran to just the Kazemi case, Iran’s human rights record, its nuclear program and its regional role. It also began sponsoring a yearly condemnation of Iran at the UN.
However, the Harper government later became increasingly concerned with embassy security, given the Iranian attack on the British embassy in 2011. That’s because there was a risk of retaliation for the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, writes Juneau. The bill allows victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators, as well as their state sponsors — a list Iran was added to shortly after the embassy closed.
The Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act has tied the new Liberal government’s hands. In a report for The Globe and Mail, Juneau writes that the government could have delisted Iran from the act, but it was difficult because, “It would have amounted to declaring that Iran does not support terrorism.” And repealing the act, too, would be politically costly.
It’s a frustration for those favouring re-engagement. In an October meeting of the Canadian International Council, Dennis Horak, Canada’s former head of mission in Iran, said, “It was a stupid law. And it’s still a stupid law.”
The feeling is shared by the Iranian Canadian Congress, an organization pushing to have relations normalized. Younes Zangiabadi, the ICC’s research director, points to re-engagement as a means of solving ongoing consular disputes. “It’s all about diplomatic talks,” he says. “If we had an embassy there, we could talk to the government, instead of relying on other countries like Italy to negotiate.”
However, those consular cases are actually a major barrier to normalized relations, in the Canadian government’s eyes. The CBC reported in May that Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal hadn’t changed much for Canada, because talks were already stalled barring the release of Maryam Mombeini. She’s the wife of Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian-Canadian environmentalist who died in a Tehran prison last year. Mombeini, also a Canadian citizen, has been barred from leaving Iran ever since.
She represents one of several recent high-profile disputes with Iran over the fate of imprisoned Iranian-Canadians. Saeed Malekpour, a permanent resident in Canada, has been imprisoned in Iran since 2008 for allegedly sharing pornography. Homa Hoodfar, an Iranian-Canadian professor of anthropology, was arrested in 2016 on charges of ‘feminism,’ but was later released. Global Affairs Canada refused to tell the CBC the exact number of Canadians in Iranian prisons.
Many recent Iranian immigrants support the ICC’s position on re-engagement. They differ from the older generations who came following the 1979 revolution, which are more regime-critical, says Kaveh Shahrooz, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He said the Liberal promise to re-engage with Iran was partly an attempt to win votes from recent Iranian immigrants, but they backtracked after pressure from older generations.
“Prime Minister Trudeau thought that he could do outreach to the Iranian regime, because that’s what he’d been hearing from certain segments of the community,” he says. “ Over time, as he tried to engage, he realized that that can’t be done.”
Many regime-critical Iranian-Canadians faced harassment from Iranian officials before the embassy closure in 2012, an experience few want to repeat. The former Iranian embassy tried to expand its influence in Canada by funding cultural centers and student groups, says Michael Petrou, a former journalist for Maclean’s who’s covered Iran. Many Iranian-Canadians felt these groups were used for surveillance.
And it’s still happening, despite the Iranian embassy’s closure. Juneau told Global News in a recent interview that Iran still maintains front organizations in Canada to launder money and pressure the diaspora. Iran shouldn’t be rewarded for this behaviour with diplomatic talks, says Petrou.
“They want those ties more than we do, because it gives the government in Iran a sense of credibility and respectability,” he says.
Juneau writes that these compounding factors led a growing faction in the Liberal caucus to oppose re-establishing ties, most vocally MPs Michael Levitt and Anthony Housefather. They’re supported by members of other parties, including Conservative senator Linda Frum and Murray Rankin of the NDP.
They’re also backed by former Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler. His non-profit group, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, organizes an annual “Iran Accountability Week,” which many parliamentarians participate in. They’re pushing for Magnitsky sanctions on top Iranian officials. They say this is to punish those most responsible for Iran’s human rights violations, after Amnesty International labeled 2018, “Iran’s year of shame.”
“What’s uniquely important about Magnitsky sanctions is that they target individuals,” says Yonah Diamond, a legal councillor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre. “Hopefully it will have a domino effect where it will augment implementations by other countries who also have Magnitsky laws.”
However, the advocates of re-engagement insist that’s the wrong approach, and point to dialogue as a means of resolving disputes. It’s especially important to talk now, they say, because the UN’s nuclear watchdog has confirmed Iran is abiding by the 2015 nuclear deal — showing they can be worked with.
“I have a very simple rule, as a former diplomat. Not talking is not a policy,” says Ferry de Kerckhove, a veteran of the Canadian Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa. “Talking to the Iranians may help, because we want to prop up the regime moderates as opposed to the regime hardline.”
But despite the hope of a new start following the 2015 deal, both the Liberals and the Conservatives have now made their position on Iran clear: there’s no desire for re-engagement. Barring a significant change, Canada and Iran will remain a fractured pair.
