"[I was contacted by Ottawa police and] told if I don't delete my X posts where I say mosques in Occupied Iran are hubs of terrorism and should be bombed, I would be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada."

"So I deleted my posts." (April X post)

"We know that the Islamic Republic is incredibly vicious. They’ve been oppressing us for the last 47 years. And so we knew that the closer it gets to the end, the more vicious and more brutal the Islamic Republic is going to be. Despite all of this, Iranians are more determined than ever to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It’s literally now or never. It’s life or death. So we are right now in the middle of the Iranian revolution, and the fight is not over yet. We still have a long way to go, but Iranians are mobilized. They’re determined."

"We’re seeing millions of Iranians out in the streets chanting “Death to the dictator, Death to the Islamic Republic.” They’re also chanting, “this is the final battle. Pahlavi will return.” Pahlavi, of course, is his royal highness, the crown prince of Iran. And the reason that they’re calling for Pahlavi to return is because Pahlavi is the only person that Iranians trust to transition them from a totalitarian Islamic dictatorship into a functioning secular, democratic society."

"At the same time, we’re also seeing horrific footage of Islamic regime terrorists who are literally just opening fire, shooting into crowds of unarmed Iranians. But, we’re also seeing videos of Iranians who are fighting back. Some of them are using homemade Molotov cocktails. I don’t condone violence, but when you have a population that’s unarmed and being brutally murdered, this is how Iranians are fighting back. At this point, Iranians have nothing left to lose, and these are the true freedom fighters of the 21st century." (January 2026 interview)

"Mosques in occupied Iran are hubs of terrorism. Burn them down. Bomb them." (X)

Goldie Ghamarie, Iranian-Canadian activist, former Ontario MLA  

Goldie Ghamari, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime and former Ontario MPP, threatened with criminal charges over an X post that linked the IRGC to mosques in Iran. Ashley Fraser/Postmedia News

 

 Goldie Ghamari is credited for what she is, a passionate political activist who advocates for the downfall of the Islamic Republic of Iran's theocratic regime. A regime that has for far too long oppressed and persecuted Iranians, forcing them to submit to radical Islamist fundamentalism, completely altering the society pre-1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile in France, to engineer the downfall of the Shah of Iran at a time when Iran, under the Shah's rule was a friend and ally of the West.

 

Under the Islamic Republic, all that the West stood for in democratic values was demonized by the theocracy which also made no secret of its plan to destroy another nation in the Middle East, the State of Israel. The regime's hostility to the United States was immediately illustrated when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized by radical Islamist students, and 66 U.S. diplomatic staff were taken hostage in retaliation for the U.S. welcoming Shah Pahlavi for medical treatment and haven.

 

Under the Ayatollah and his ruling mullahs, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the scheme was laid for minority Shiites to form a pincer-like geographic move to challenge the primacy of the Arab Sunni majority in the Middle East through violent insurrection. Aryan Iran under the regime, was determined to become the driving political/cultural/religious/social force, using its oil wealth and the manipulation of Shiite fundamentalism to gain its goal of conquest.

 

That led to its al-Quds division of the IRGC forming Shiite-led militias trained, armed and loyal to the regime to act as its enforcement arms locally and abroad. In Lebanon the Hezbollah militia was formed, separate and apart of and a challenge to, the official Lebanese military. As was Islamic Jihad. Hamas, the governing group in Gaza, came under Iranian aegis as well, as did tribal Shiite militias in Iraq, prepared to do the Iranian regime's bidding. In Lebanon in the 1980s, Hezbollah introduced itself through suicide bombers who blew up a U.S. military base in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. marines. 

 

BREAKING

I just received a death threat by Islamic Regime-linked hacker group "Handala Hack Team" from the e-mail address: Handala_Team@outlook.com

"Death to Elica le Bon and Goldie Ghamari

 

The X post that Goldie Ghamari was ordered to take down by the Ottawa Police Service was accompanied by a video illustrating an IRGC rally taking place within a Tehran mosque. She was warned she would be charged under Section  319 of the Criminal Code if she failed to comply with the order. This, at a time in Canada when for the last three years mobs of pro-Hamas supporters surged through the streets of Ottawa accusing Israel of 'genocide' for striking back against Palestinian terrorists who slaughtered Jewish children, women and other civilians, in a rampage of rape and dismemberment and hostage-taking.

 

Despite that the protesters wearing masks and keffiyehs chanted hate messages and threats against Jews in Canada, police forces across the country did little to warn them against offending Canada's hate laws in their invective of hate, harassment and threats. An omission of public duty that reflected the federal Liberal government's own lack of responsible reaction, followed by provincial and municipal governments in turn, alongside the nation's police forces, as the marches went on week after week, proclaiming 'globalize the intifada', 'Final Solution', and 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'...all understood as threats against the existence of Israel.

 

Iran, through its minions that have infiltrated Canadian society, politics and academia, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and operatives of the regime's terrorist groups, has a malign presence in Canada, threatening the safety and security not only of Canadian Jews, but Iranian-Canadians who detest the Iranian regime and want their country freed from its malevolent tyranny. Goldie Ghamari is one of the leaders of those campaigning for the end of the Islamic Republic. The presence of Iranian proxies in Canada, of members of the IRGC, of the regime itself represents a danger to Canada, their presence ignored by government despite that they are on Canada's terrorist list.

 

Goldie Ghamari has made herself a public figure of great respect, appearing on U.S. cable news and Piers Morgan Uncensored. She has a Iranian affairs YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands subscribers. And she has been threatened by terrorist groups operating out of the North America with assassination. Threats she has relayed to police and with local authorities. An American-Iranian was also threatened with assassination by the same group. A $250,000 beheading bounty was posted for their assassination.

 

FBI Director Kash Patel responded to those threats where Canadian officials failed to: "This FBI will hunt down every actor behind these cowardly death threats and cyberattacks and will bring the full force of American law enforcement down on them", he stated in March. In Canada, Masood Masjoody, an anti-regime Canadian math professor of Iranian birth was was found murdered a month ago. Two Iranians now face charges of first-degree murder in his death.

 

Laptop and source code on the screen composing flag of Iran.

(photo credit: max.ku/Shutterstock)

 

Associated Press, Propagandists for Iran

"Iran wanted to negotiate for peace with [U.S. President Donald] Trump, but Trump responded with war."

'He started the war, but we will definitely be the victorious side."

Jaafar Mohammadi, Zanjan, Iran, provincial director of cultural and Islamic guidance 

Pedestrians walk by a destroyed building within the Grand Hosseiniyeh, with the mosque visible in the background, which officials at the site say was hit by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes Tuesday, in Zanjan, Iran, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

 

In an obvious edification exercise for the great readership of the Associated Press, permission was given by whoever passes as an authority figure now in the Islamic Republic of Iran to set out on a day's journey through part of Iran, not far from the capital Tehran, for a group of Associated Press reporters. Clearly, 'authorities' in Iran recognize the non-hostile attitude taken by the Associated Press in its reportage, picked up by mainstream legacy media all over the English-speaking world. 

 

One can recall the Third Reich in WWII exercising a high degree of alertness to positive propaganda that belied the extent of Fascist Germany's master plan to conquer Europe, one country at a time, from the Nordic nations to Eastern and then Western Europe in its inexorable military push for territory and the advance of fascism with Berlin at the helm of a brave new world subservient to Nazi ideology.

 

This kind of devious white-washing of the gritty swamp of ideology and conquest allied with the duping of bystanding nations to the belief that the anti-human-rights, averse-to-freedom and constant lethal attacks on sovereign nations who reject totalitarianism and tyrannical rule of despots whose malign agendas are meant to disrupt world order and social  cohesion, is not uncommon, and Iran, the foremost supporter of terrorism globally is a past master of feigning innocence of any malignant purpose to its future plans.

A picture of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on the side of the road in the outskirts of Tehran, Iran, early Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

 

A just-published piece meant for global uptake under the AP byline ostensibly written by a Bassem Mroue, Middle East correspondent to AP, logged the 12-hour impressions gathered by AP reporters as they drove toward Tehran to report the continuation of daily life "with only occasional signs of the continuing war, including a Shiite religious centre that officials say was  damaged by a recent airstrike". 

 

The writer mentioned that AP operates within Iran, aside from this more recent permission granted for an additional 'team' to enter to gain a "glimpse of the country at the centre of a regional war that has jolted the world economy and shows no sign of ending five weeks after Khamenei was killed in the opening U.S. and Israeli salvo". Foreign press would be permitted to report directly from within Iran only if their perspective vis-a-vis Iran is known to be 'friendly'. And AP does not disappoint.

 

Iran International

 

While hastening to assure the reader that AP 'retains full editorial control of its content'. Well, of course it does, since whatever it writes gilds the lily of the brazen nuclear-seeking regime with its  Shiite axis intention of dominating the majority Sunni states in the Middle East and above all its often-declared mission of exterminating Israel from the geography of a region that Jews were historically ancestral to. All of which sits nicely with the AP agenda.

 

Entering  the northwestern city of Zanjan, some six hours from the border of Turkey, where the team started out from, Iranian officials informed of an airstrike that hit a religious community centre causing the death of two people, and destroying a library and a clinic in a centuries-old compound whose golden dome was damaged by the strike. AP reports the Israeli military having stated "a military headquarters" was hit, and it is never their intention to harm civilian facilities. While AP quoted that Israeli explanation, it adds there was no further 'elaboration'. Why would there be? 

 

Iran, as well as its proxies, has a habit of installing military bases, weapons depots, nuclear installations, alongside civilian enclaves, hospitals included. Priceless for cover, and all the more so for propaganda purposes. 

A leaked internal directive from the IRGC’s missile command appears to show that the use of civilian locations to conceal, support and in some cases facilitate missile launch operations is not ad hoc, but structured, documented and built into operational planning.

The 33-page document shared with Iran International by the hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice) has been marked “very confidential” and is titled Instruction for Identification, Maintenance, and Use of Positions.

The document is attributed to the Specialized Documents Center of the Intelligence and Operations Deputy of the IRGC's missile command.

Arash Sohrabi, Iran International 

People walk near Iranian missiles in a park in Tehran, March 26, 2026.  Iran International 

 

"It has hurt me a lot and distressed me a lot."

"With these airstrikes, [The U.S. and Israel] are showing their malicious intent to the whole world."

Somayeh Shojaei, local Zanjan resident 

Conveniently, AP finds Iranians eager to condemn not their repressive, human-rights-abusing regime that has kept the country prisoner to a fundamentalist theocratic regime for over 45 years, to be quoted as proof that Iran is innocent of all and any charges of malevolent intent, and is an innocent victim of a power-hungry duo, intent for no good reason on toppling the regime and destroying as much of the civilian infrastructure of an ancient country as it can manage before the UN makes good on its threats of charging both with war crimes.

 

Trump, the article intones has threatened to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages where they belong", after the IRGC closed the Strait of Hormuz once the U.S. and Israel carried out thousands of airstrikes countrywide. Most of Iran's leaders have been assassinated; those would be the leaders, needless to say, complicit in the slaughter of an estimated 40,000 Iranians who last came out on the streets of cities across Iran to demand the end of the regime and freedom for their country.

 

The AP article goes on to state that daily life in Iran carries on, in city after city where they witnessed normal traffic, businesses open and people walking the streets. Women, observed the article were seen without the mandatory head covering demanded by the ruling theocracy. They paid dearly for that. But AP made no mention of other women covered head to toe in black shrouds. With no little amount of inferred skepticism, mention is made of the U.S. and Israel aiming at military and internal security forces.

 

"The AP reporters saw several government buildings and police stations that had been destroyed. They passed a number of checkpoints operated by plain-clothes Basij, an internal security force, and uniformed members of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard." That would be, of course, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps considered a terrorist organization by a number of Western countries; they and their offshoot Basij slaughtered Iranians at will just several months earlier. But to read the AP account they're merely agents of the regime as any national guard would be in any Western nation of note.

 

Iranian missiles displayed in a park (March 26, 2026) Iran International 

 

 

"Tehran's bet appears to rest on a familiar asymmetry; its conviction that it can absorb more pain, for longer than the U.S. and its partners are willing to tolerate."

"The leadership likely calculates that sustained economic pressure, finite munitions stockpiles, and the political cost of mounting casualties will narrow Washington's and Israel's appetite for a protracted confrontation."

"Time, in this view, is not neutral -- it's a battleground."

"If Iran calibrates its retaliation carefully, and if it can maintain elite cohesion at home, it may be able to outlast the immediate storm."

"Survival, not victory, is the strategic objective." 

Ali Vaez, director, Iran Project, International Crisis Group, Washington 

 

"They thought Iran was weak and they're realizing that although Iran is weaker than two years ago, the country still has thousands of ballistic missiles and drones."

"Iran has no other option than to resist and sooner or later they will realize that they made a mistake."

Foad Izadi, professor of world studies, University of Tehran

 

"My sense is that the Islamic regime's bench is deeper than the White House or the Israelis may be assuming."

"If the regime has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of its people, we haven't seen defections, we haven't seen signs there is a splintering inside the regime."

"There is sufficient cohesion in the clerical-judicial authorities that even with the taking out of the Supreme Leader and the armed-forces commander, it doesn't mean we are going to see a collapse of the regime."

Jeffrey Feltman, former UN undersecretary general for  political affairs

 

 

With the air attacks launched by the U.S. and Israel on 28 February leading to the death on that first day, of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, at minimum an estimated 1,100 people had perished in the space of the first four days of attacks. Large numbers of government and military buildings were destroyed both in Tehran and around the country. In a strategic bid for survival the Islamic Republic counts itself prepared to absorb and withstand great pain, more, it estimates, than the U.S., Israel and Gulf states combined could absorb.

 

With that in mind the strategy was developed to overwhelm the Persian Gulf with drones and missiles for the explicit purpose of exacting maximum chaos, exhaust the defensive capabilities of the region along with its political will, while disrupting global energy markets in the hope that this can all be achieved before Iran exhausts its massive store of projectiles. Weakened before the onslaught both by an earlier June 2025 wave of attacks, as well as a nation-wide series of massive protests against the regime, a depleted leadership is left to fight a war despite its polarized population.

 

"Iran, unlike the United States, has prepared itself for a long war", stated Ari Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, reflecting his crucial role in Iran's process of decision making. President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, senior cleric Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Ari Larijani represent the makeup of an interim council. After the decision was made to elevate the deceased Grand Ayatollah's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the revelation that he was seriously wounded at the time his father was killed, it is now believed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has assumed the power of control in Iran.

 

 

Iranian leadership had determined to institute centralization plans for decision-making called the 'mosaic' defence strategy which includes giving military commanders the power to independently reach decisions reflective of any given situation they encounter. It was undoubtedly they who adopted the strategy of attacking Gulf Arab countries that are allies of the United States who also depend on the U.S. for their own defence, alongside trade and financial agreements.

 

Iran was estimated to have roughly 2,000 ballistic missiles left in its arsenal following last year's joint assault by the U.S. and Israel. A much larger number of Shahed drones formed an additional portion of their stock of weaponry, and a steady stream of additional drones is being handed over to Iran by its ally Russia, who is also producing them, modified and based on the Iranian design. Russia, according to an analysis through Bloomberg Economics produces the drones at a  rate of several hundred daily.

 

Smoke rising near the Dubai International Airport after a drone attack overnight on Sunday  Reuters

 

"Over recent days we're seeing operations against the launchers, on the one hand, and strikes to cork up the tunnels out of which those launders and missiles are meant to emerge", explained Israel's security cabinet minister Eli Cohen through Israel Army Radio. The U.S. strikes have hit thousands of targets across Iran, while Iran responded with hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones. 

 

No sign of anti-government protests have re-emerged internally in the country to date, with Iranian civilians likely hoping that foreign outside intervention may succeed where their January mass protests failed, at a steep cost in lives when the regime cracked down with deadly fire, killing tens of thousands of protesters.  

 

Conflict across the Middle East continues to rage after the US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran, killing the country's supreme leader on 28 February.  Anadolu via Getty Images

"For the Islamic Republic as an entity, it's vital to project the uninterrupted functioning of the system."

"Decentralization is critical for Tehran. It ensures that in the absence of communication with the central government, the country can continue to function for security political and administrative purposes."

"After the June war, Iran made considerable efforts to expand its launcher capabilities. It's unclear how successful they have been. [The entrances and exits of these facilities -- underground] missile cities -- [are also vulnerable to attack]."

"Although Iranian teams have reportedly worked around the clock to reopen damaged gateways, such efforts require resources that may eventually be depleted. If I had to offer an estimate, I would say Iran may be capable of sustaining the current tempo of attacks for at least another three to four weeks."
Arman Mahmoudian, research fellow, Global and National Security Institute, University of South Florida 

"Seeing these people chanting what I was hearing from those who were beating me on the streets of Tehran is  traumatizing."

"The real people of Iran [are not among them because they know] government is manipulating their ideologies and their beliefs and their unity." 

Ghazal Shokri, Iranian Canadian 

 

"[These events in Canada are] essentially an IRGC rally to spread its violent ideology. [Canada can no longer] tolerate any further escalation of radicalization or risks to our national security." 

"Canadian leaders should denounce Al Quds Day as a terrorist threat."

"We urge law enforcement and governments to make use of every tool available to uphold public safety and take decisive measures to confront this growing danger: arrest and prosecute extremists inciting violence, remove Iranian regime-linked individuals from the country and prevent further infiltration and criminalize the wilful promotion of terrorism." 

Noah Shack, CEO, president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

The Al Quds Day protest outside the courthouse at 361 University Avenue in downtown Toronto in March 2019. This year's event is set for Saturday, March 14. Photo by Jack Boland /Toronto Sun/Postmedia

 

A horrified world was witness in January to Iranian citizens gathering by the tens of thousands in cities all across Iran to condemn and demand the end of the Islamic Republic which has, since 1979, dominated and persecuted its own population, while forming, training, arming and commanding proxy terrorist groups throughout the Middle East with a focus on Shiite domination in a Sunni-Muslim majority region. Its often-stated designs to obliterate Israel 'from the map of the Middle East' and its fear-mongering threats of nuclear designs and ballistic missiles have led to escalating international attacks.

 

The regime's response was swift and deadly, tasking its Basij police linked to the Islamic Republican Guard Corps to use all means and methods to strike down the protesters. Tens of thousands of Iranian civilians were wounded, more were imprisoned and subjected to torture, while an estimated 30,000 Iranian protesters were killed, before the protests were put to a halt. This mass atrocity was addressed by the United Nations Human Rights Council which urged "full respect for the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran".  

"This is promotion of terrorism in our streets."

"We are  calling on all of those who are speaking out today and beyond, to actually make sure that sort of thing and Al Quds Day specifically, is shut down, and is not allowed to take place in Toronto, or anywhere in this country, because hateful words, hateful demonstrations turn into this kind of violent attack, and we need to end it now."

Sara Lefton, CJA Federation of Greater Toronto  

CJA

 

And while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is recognized for what it is, a listed terrorist group banned in Canada, an event established by the Iranian regime that takes place annually at the end of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, Al-Quds Day (Arabic name for Jerusalem opposing Israel's 'occupation' of its own hereditary city of ancient Judean origins) is celebrated on the streets of Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, as it is wherever Muslim extremists are, led by the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood and the IRGC in Western countries.

 

These are events taking place globally which call for the destruction of Israel and the death of Israelis in support of the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps agenda. The U.K. government this week approved the London Metropolitan Police request to ban the event, citing a risk of "severe public disorder". In place of the march, organizers will now resort to a static protest in Britain. A change of tactics, while the message and the threats that accompany the event remain. 

 

Earlier in the week a statement was issued for the city's legal department "to seek an injunction to stop this hate gathering" scheduled to take place in front of the U.S. consulate on Saturday, on the part of Toronto Coun. James Pasternak who urged governments and law enforcement agencies to act on infractions of the Canadian Criminal Code, Toronto's own hate rallies policy and bylaws: "I know hate when I see it and the Al Quds day march is NOT Charter protected", wrote Mr. Pasternak. 

"[The annual event is not "a neutral protest", but a "foreign interference in Canadian affairs."

"I think I, and a lot of other Iranian Canadians, view it as a show of force by the Islamic regime in Canada."

"And I think it's intended to send a message to the Canadian community as a whole, but particularly Iranian Canadians, about the power that Iran's regime can exercise even outside the country."

"I think, as you can see on your television, as you have seen in the past couple of months, Iranians, both in that country and outside of it, want democracy, they want human rights, they want equality and they denounce violence of every kind."

Iranian Canadian Kaveh Shahrooz, lawyer, human rights activist, fellow, McDonald Laurier Institute 

"The war in Iran has been well underway for a week. Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of the regime’s leadership are dead, more than two thousand targets have been struck across the country, and per U.S. Central Command, the U.S. military has “struck or sunk” more than thirty Iranian ships. Iran has retaliated in full force, unlike its token attack against U.S. forces in Qatar after Operation Midnight Hammer, striking military, civilian, and infrastructure targets in eleven countries so far."

"With the exception of China, Russia, and maybe North Korea, very few countries are going to cry tears for the loss of Khamenei, whatever their public posture on the U.S. and Israeli attacks at the moment. His regime wreaked havoc across the region, sponsored terrorism, and had challenged U.S. interests and the interests of Western and Gulf countries for some time. Nevertheless, there is still clearly some discomfort with the operation, from Capitol Hill to our European allies and throughout the Middle East. At the risk of stating the obvious, my sense is that this operation will ultimately be judged on its long-term outcome. If we end up with a more stable and peaceful region and a less hostile Iranian regime, it will be heralded as a resounding success. If, on the other hand, we find ourselves in a quagmire with ongoing chaos and conflict, there will be a lot of second-guessing."

Michael Froman, president, Council on Foreign Relations

Men watch from a hillside as a plume of smoke rises after an explosion on March 2, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

 

"It could be six, it could be eight, it could be three [weeks before operations are concluded]."

"[The U.S. has an] unlimited supply of weapons."

"Iran is hoping we cannot sustain this."

"Our capabilities are overwhelming and gathering still, as are those of our Israeli partners."

"Our munitions are full up."

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth  

If he isn't assassinated before being chosen, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's second-oldest son, himself a hard-line cleric, without being the Islamic Shi'ite elite scholar -- the 'pope' of Islam's Shia minority's faithful -- his father was, may yet be named as his successor, as the next leader of Iran. Mojtaba Khamenei, in that role is without doubt, a marked man. One whom President Trump considers a 'lightweight' with whom the regime's policies would remain sacrosanct. 

 

Some Middle East and Iran experts hypothesize that Iran's Islamic Republican Guard Corps who answered to no authority but that of the Supreme Leader, and now continue to follow through on his final instructions, are counting on the U.S. and Israel running out of munitions. For while the IRGC sets off inexpensive drones, its challengers are making use of expensive missiles to intercept them. Reckoning that if they can hold out against the U.S. and Israel long enough, victory will be theirs.

 

In the meanwhile, they continue to lob missiles and drones at their near neighbours, friends and foes alike. That part of their wartime schematic posits that if the IRGC places their Gulf neighbours under enough strain and stress, they will demand a cessation of hostilities; for the U.S. and Israel to pull back and leave off hammering the Islamic Republic. It was revealed that Russia not only has given Iran intelligence on U.S. installations in the Gulf, but is also supplying them with drones; a reversal of Iran supplying Shahed drones to Russia for its conflict with Ukraine. 

 

"Action to reduce pressure on oil is imminent", Mr. Trump said Thursday even as pump prices advanced to their highest level since 2024 in the U.S. ahead of November midterm elections. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is at a near total halt, leaving exporters to scramble for routes away from the region. A protracted war could "bring down the economies of the world", warned Qatar. Gulf energy exporters could shut production within weeks, it was predicted. 

 

A barrage of missiles and drones targeting Gulf countries overnight and into Friday sent powerful blasts into Kuwait and Bahrain. Dubai sent out missile alerts for the second day, on Friday. While maintaining airstrikes on the Islamic Republic, Israel "significantly expanded" its presence on the ground in Lebanon where Tehran-linked Hezbollah sent missiles into Israel and for their trouble saw a wave of airstrikes by Israel hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Shia Hezbollah's stronghold. 

 

Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on Friday, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. As the conflict in the Middle East widens, Iran may find many of its traditional allies are reluctant to get directly involved. (Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

 

The Islamic Republic, stated Iran's sidelined (by the IRGC) president Masoud Pezeshkian, is "committed to lasting peace", and to that end will continue to defend itself. For his part, Mr. Trump vowed to "totally demolish" Iranian forces, planning to "clean out" the Iranian leadership structure. So far in the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, 1,332 people are estimated to have been killed, dozens others elsewhere in the region by Iran's retaliatory strikes, among them six U.S. troops. 

 

Overnight into Friday Arab states intercepted Iranian projectiles, with Bahrain revealing that the region's oldest refinery, a unit at its Sitra site, had caught fire, struck by a missile. An attack targeting the U.S. military facility at Al Udeid Air Base  was thwarted by Qatar, while multiple missiles and drones were intercepted overnight by Saudi Arabia where strikes were directed at a U.S. facility at Al Kharj near Riyadh, and the Aramco headquarters in the east.

 

Iran has launched 500 ballistic and cruise missiles plus 2,000 drones since the war's start; 60 percent at American targets located in Gulf states. South Korea is in talks with the U.S. in potential redeployment of weapons, Patriot air-defence systems among them, while France authorized U.S. military support aircraft to use Istres Air Base as long as they are not used in Iran operations. 

 

"UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" wrote Trump Friday on Truth Social, demanding that Iran surrender, on the seventh day of the conflict. There will be no negotiations for the conflict's end. 

 

Strikes continue to hit Iran’s capital, Tehran, late Saturday night. CNN

 

Outlawing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/Terrorist Central

"It's influencing the political and the social landscape of Canada. It's influencing the youth and mobilizing them against Western values against Canadian security, in very subtle ways and sometimes in very overt ways." 

"It's the same issue with respect to China, how they have been operating. The Islamic Republic is no different."

"In terms of the evidence before the Liberal government, nothing substantial has changed since six years ago. We all know that in 2020 the IRGC shot down [Ukrainian Airlines] PS752, killing all 175 passengers, including 55 Canadian citizens. If that wasn't sufficient evidence, I don't know what else the Liberal government was looking for."

"We welcome the change in the government's attitude after six years of not doing anything about it and giving all sorts of excuses why they were not listing IRGC as a terrorist entity despite all the evidence that they admitted existed. The evidence was there. It was just a question of political will."

"[Six years of inaction has allowed the IRGC to] spread their tentacles in Canada. Their numbers have increased. Their influence has increased. We are going to feel that influence and the impact of them being in Canada and within our systems and institutions for decades to come."

Mojdeh Shahriari, Vancouver human rights lawyer, co-founder, Stop IRGC

People take part in a a protest against the Iranian government on April 21 in Montreal (John Kenney / MONTREAL GAZETTE)

 

In 1976 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in France to head a revolution that removed the Shah of Iran from power, in turn installing a theocratic regime with himself at its head, it was understood that a fundamentalist Islamist Shiite government had taken power in the country, with Khomeini as its Supreme Leader. Despite which, the extent of the reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran since that time in influencing Middle East affairs and international relations far afield might never have been imagined.

 

In the close aftermath of the revolutionary change in government in Iran, many Iranians knew they could not remain in their country of birth. From a fairly open society, with good international relations with non-Muslim countries -- including Israel -- the Islamic Republic was destined to become a divisive power broker in the Middle East. Under the ruling Ayatollahs and their Islamic Republican Guard Corps the intention was to restore Iran to its historical influence as the supreme regional power. 

 

In the predominately Arab Muslim Middle East, Iranians, though Muslim, are not Arab but Persians, the Aryans that Adolf Hitler was adamant were a superior 'race'. There is also a sectarian divide between Iran and the other Muslim countries of the Middle East which are majority Sunni Muslim, while Iran is Shiite, a relative minority. From its very inception in 1976 the Islamic Republic set out to gain a commanding influence within the Middle East, and to elevate the status of Shiite Islam. An unsubtle state of confrontation between Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia ensued.

Iran's ambitions rose to challenge Saudi Arabia as custodian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in its aspirations to become the supreme Islamic authority commanding the Middle East. Iran's animus toward the Jewish State of Israel surpassed that of any Arab state by a wide margin. And Iran courted the disaffected populations of minority-status Shiites in Arab countries. The al-Quds division of the IRGC founded an Islamist Shiite group in Lebanon, training and arming it as a proxy militant arm it could control.

 

The IRGC is a major military, political and economic force in Iran   EPA

Hezbollah came to world notice when in 1983 it undertook a truck-suicide bombing on an American military base, a marine corps barracks in Beirut against UN-affiliated peace envoys, killing 241 American soldiers. Another suicide bomber soon afterward killed 58 French UN-assigned paratroopers. This was Hezbollah, a newly-minted terrorist group, doing the bidding of its masterminds in Tehran. Since that time, Hezbollah has been a terror-creation of Iran, tasked to do its bidding, with a major focus on Israel, and on suicide-mission attacks abroad on Jewish enclaves.

 

There is also a Western infiltration component to the Islamic Republic's aspiration for dominance. Those Iranians who fled a revolutionary Islamist Iran they had no wish to live within, have found themselves, in the past decade, being targeted for their anti-Islamist, anti-Ayatollah, anti-terrorist attitudes. The Trudeau government in Canada has allowed the infiltration of Iranian agents and personnel, including senior leaders of the IRGC to have easy access to Canadian society at all levels, to enter on visas, to establish residency and to undermine the democratic freedoms of the Iranian expatriate population.

 

Their scheme in Canada, as it is elsewhere in the free world, is to destabilize all the institutions that make the West a free world, undermining the social and cultural values of nations of the West. Although Iranian-Canadians have made it clear to the Trudeau government that they have reason to fear the entry of representatives of the Iranian regime to Canada who intimidate and threaten them, the very fact that those involved in the most extremes of human rights abuses have entry to Canada is in and of itself inexcusable.

 

Finally, although all parties in Canada's Parliament have long supported a move to outlaw the presence of Iranian regime representatives in Canada, on a number of occasions voting unanimously to place them on a terror list and impose sanctions, the Trudeau government chose not to take appropriate action. Until last week, when it finally did. "Based on their actions, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the IRGC has knowingly carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity", explained the government's minister of public safety. Stating something that has long been known.

"This process of IRGC spreading its influence throughout the Western world has been going for a very long time, unfortunately, and they have been able to infiltrate many of our academic institutions, our professional institutions and they have been money-laundering [in Canada]."

"Everyone is looking for an assassination plot or something like that, and of course they do that, and they are known for it and their terrorist activities all over the world, but they have been infiltrating and interfering with our institutions for decades and in the past six years this has intensified."

"So it has been a huge disaster, in my view. In 2018, Parliament unanimously voted to immediately list the IRGC and I never heard any reasonable explanation from the Liberal government why they were dragging their feet. Something political has changed for them in terms of their calculation of the cost benefit of listing the IRGC."

Mojdeh Shahriari, Vancouver human rights lawyer

Members of the Revolutionary Guards attend a parliamentary session in Tehran. Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images