"The 14-point text is unambiguous on the point the White House is most eager to fog. It commits the United States, "with regional partners," to develop a "plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran" -- $3 billion of which has, according to the unsurpassed journalist, Lee Smith, already been sent to Iran through by way of the United Arab Emirates. The president has called reports of that figure "fake news" and insisted nobody is putting up "ten cents." The clause nevertheless sits prominently in the document he signed."

"Only one question really matters: what does the agreement, if honored by Iran, deliver? It leaves enriched uranium inside Iran, concedes a right to enrichment that was recently a red line, permits the Iranian ballistic-missile program Trump now defends supposedly because other countries have missiles too, and pours reconstruction money into an economy whose ruling institution is the brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)."

"The regime in Tehran, which has waited out many American presidents and means to wait out another, is betting they are bluffing about everything except the check."

Pierre Rehov, Gatestone Institute 

A Fattah ballistic missile is displayed during the annual military parade in Tehran. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

 

Interesting how Canada-Israel relations have plunged into an icy bath in the past decade coinciding with Liberal governments lauding their 'progressive', DEI, Critical Race Theory values, and managing to impose them as credit-worthy virtues to abide by. In their playbook terrorists are 'militants', or 'gunmen' and a small nation that displays its sovereign right of response against existential threats represents an oppressive regime over-reacting to mere hyperbolic threats of violence however expressed in lavish bloodbaths.

 

Canada's previous and its current prime ministers take pride in their declared solidarity with the world's foremost victims whose claims to the historic patrimony of another people's ancestral land strikes a sympathetic chord with a government that hasn't hesitated to disown its own history while bemoaning itself as colonialist imperialists guilty of 'genocide' of Canada's aboriginals. The warm friendship and trust between Canada and the State of Israel exemplified most cordially by the preceding Conservative-led government is no more.

 

Canada's current prime minister, Mark Carney, finds much in common with the Palestinian Authority's autocratic, corrupt President Mahmoud Abbas, with the financially influential Emir of Qatar as exemplars of democracy, while giving a cold shoulder to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the sole democracy in the Middle East, a Jewish state that governs a diverse religious, ethnic, cultural population seen nowhere else in the geography. Mr. Carney maintains cordial relationships with all but Mr. Netanyahu.

 

In Mr. Carney's opinion, Israel is guilty of any number of offences, primary among them its military responses to violent mass atrocities committed against Jews, much less ongoing threats of annihilation by the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose proxy militias, trained, funded and armed by the al-Quds branch of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps attack Israel from the south, from the north through Hamas and Hezbollah, goading Israel to invade Gaza and Lebanon in defensive reaction to never-ending attacks. 

 

Montreal4Palestine says the effigies displayed during the demonstration were directed at political figures, Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Donald Trump. Montreal police’s hate crimes unit is investigating the incident.

 

None of which gave Canada's prime minister pause in declaring support for Palestinian statehood, and issuing statements of condemnation against Israel for its military pursuit of terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as those in Lebanon. Praising Arab leadership for their peace overtures, imagined tolerance and democratic values, all absent but for a scant few Middle East countries, while slurring Israel for its presumed lack of those virtues seems to satisfy something deep within Mr. Carney's subconscious.

 

It looks suspiciously akin to antisemitism. Denouncing Israel for "illegal invasion" of Lebanon, with no nuanced acknowledgement that the government of Lebanon has failed to exert its sovereignty and responsibility to its population that suffers a malignant terror group in Hezbollah to place the country in a vulnerable position by constant rocket fire into northern Israel. Iran's regime, sworn to Israel's destruction, has traditionally occupied Lebanon through Hezbollah, yet no acknowledgement of that simple reality in understanding Israel's dilemma is forthcoming.

 

When Mr. Carney finally directly addressed the inflamed persecution of Canadian Jews by organized foreign interests which has seen years of 'pro-Palestinian' and 'anti-Israel' processions throughout Canadian streets, condemning Israel for 'genocide' against Palestinians, while threatening Jews in Canada with 'Final Solution', 'Globalize the Intifada', and 'From the river to the sea', codes well known to represent incitement to violence, he spoke of rabid antisemitism as an unforgivable social pathology.

 

One which he had every intention, finally of addressing, after appearing to nonchalantly fail to 'notice' the ubiquitous presence of Jew-hate emanating from a flood of new immigrants, refugees and migrants whose cultural traditions of that malady were carried with them into Canada to augment already-existing, but quiescent suspicion of Jews to bring the pathology to a crescendo of orchestrated taunts, threats and violence including vandalism, gunshots and incendiary devices thrown at synagogues, Jewish schools and private Jewish-owned businesses.

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks against antisemitism in front of members of the Jewish community and law enforcement leaders at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto on Monday, June 1, 2026. Photo by Peter Power/Postmedia

 

His grand solution, announced at a Toronto synagogue where he spoke comfortingly and comfortably about his intentions to finally put an end to the disorder, with the assignment of an advisory committee to study the issue of rampant antisemitism in Canada, was to appoint none other than Muslim and Arab known Jew-haters to the task of solving the problem that they themselves are responsible for. 

 

In the end, it is interesting how two governments, one the United States of America, the other Canada, neighbours in North America, have a president and a prime minister thought to be quite unalike one another in temperament, character and values. Yet there is more to meet the eye than a cursory review of the behaviour of each, and in the end, summing up their stated positions, their concerns and their democratic declarations, along with the outcomes of their intentions, it becomes clear they have much in common. 

"When the Qatari government [blessed by Washington] allowed the Taliban to open an office in Doha this week that had the Taliban flag flying outside and signs everywhere proclaiming the office to represent the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai took the symbolism as an affront."

"For Karzai and his government, the announcement, the flags and the signs brought the enemy unwanted legitimacy. Instead of being treated as insurgents or terrorists, the Taliban got the symbols of statehood."

"Just a week earlier, Karzai had been in Doha speaking at the Brookings Institution’s annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, clearly warning the Americans and the Qataris not to give the Taliban these symbolic victories."

Brookings Institute, June 20, 2013

Taliban security personnel stand guard as a burqa-clad woman passes by a market. AFP/Getty

 

"The terrorist [Hamas]organization’s leadership has been residing in Qatar for over a decade. It has enjoyed a life of luxury and privilege while there."

"Visiting Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and other countries, those top Hamas officials have been able to fly around the Middle East. They felt safe and secure, even when they cheered the October 7 massacre on, watching Israelis being slaughtered."

"They watched as the Bibas family was carted off to Gaza; they celebrated as they viewed videos of the massacre of young people at the Nova music festival."

Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post  

Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya sits at a mourning house for assassinated Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar, August 2, 2024. (photo credit: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

 

A Muslim country founded in 1971, Qatar is a monarchy ruled by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who ascended to the throne in 2013 after his father abdicated his position. Qatar drew attention from around the world when it became an economic success through the discovery of natural gas fields. 

• Qatar has a critical relationship with the United States
• Qatar finances terrorism around the world
• Qatar is also the deal broker in the Middle East

 Qatar maintains a relationship with terrorists, demonstrated by a permissive legal jurisdiction that allows terror financiers to operate in the state and the close connections Qatar has historically held with such illicit channeling of funds. Aside from financing Hamas, Qatar’s alleged support of regional terrorist networks, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, has long been problematic. In 2003, Congress was alerted to several charities in Qatar supporting al-Qaeda. Since then, Qatar has been accused of not only providing refuge to terrorism financiers but also of directly funding terrorist groups.

Mid East Journal  

 

 

Interesting, is it not? Qatar elevating the Taliban -- long before it helped engineer an escape route for the United States out of the quagmire of Afghanistan, enabling the Taliban to return as the repressive regime that tormented its people with its totalitarian Islamist rule in 2021 -- as a 'state-in-waiting'. Much as it and the United Nations and indeed the Western world has been fairly unanimous in elevating 'Palestine' to the status of a state-in-waiting with the recognition of its nascent status, despite the Palestinian leadership refusing to recognize the right of Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

 

Spain, Ireland, France, the United Kingdom and Canada, all anxious to demonstrate their progressive credentials, condemning Israel for its assaults on Hamas in Gaza where the full-scale conflict initiated by the Palestinian terrorist gangs of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and ordinary Palestinian civilians flooding over the border from Gaza into southern Israel to launch a frenzy of mass rape, mutilation, murder and bloodshed on a genocidal scale, followed by abductions of children, families, women, foreign farm workers and IDF sentries into Gaza was answered as any country would, by a drive to destroy the terrorists' leadership, weapons caches and endless tunnels.

 

Qatar -- the backbone of the Muslim Brotherhood, financial saviour of Hamas, whose vast energy resources translate as wealth enabling it to buy an invested presence in the West, disarming suspicions of Islamists as threats to Western civilization -- has presented itself as a trusted interlocutor between democratic nations and the totalitarianism of Islamist jihad. It is as though an evil spell has been cast on those nations of the West whose leaders have allowed themselves to be mesmerized by wealth and assurances of innocently compatible relations.

 

Protesters marched over Westminster Bridge towards Whitehall   Getty Images

 

Canada's current Liberal prime minister, who has shunned and discarded Canada's traditional recognition of Israel as a democratic ally playing follow-the-leader with Britain, France and Australia, casts Israel and its Prime Minister as the villain in an existential battle against the forces of violent terrorism. To Mark Carney, as with Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Anthony Albanese, the Palestinians 'deserve' to have a state of their own, alongside that of Israel. Despite that the Palestinian leadership has continually refused all offers of negotiation between it and Israel to that end.

 

While a massive resurgence of antisemitism has wrought havoc throughout the West with the most recent infiltration of Muslim immigrants, refugees and migrants in organized marches seeking to delegitimize Israel, accusing it of genocide against the Palestinians, threatening the Jewish diaspora that has lived for a millennia throughout Europe, creating chaos in the countries that have amassed a sizeable Muslim presence, few governments have taken steps to protect their Jewish communities, much less put a stop to events of public displays of hatred and threats against their minority Jews.

 

Canada being a case in point, where for over two years, rampant antisemitism has been on display in all cities of the nation, with municipalities, provinces and the federal government sitting back unresponsive to their duty enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing respect, security and freedoms to all citizens without exception. The example led by the federal Liberal party has been echoed down the chain of public policy; denounce antisemitism, while linking it to the crime of Islamophobia.

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

 

In prime minister Carney's search to replace Canada's traditional trading partner under the stress of Donald Trump's egregious tariff wars imposed upon allies and enemies alike, he has taken himself to Beijing -- a repressive regime whose own global trade policies are rapacious and politically and socially abusive, to soften the enmity between Canada and China that has resulted when the Chinese Communist Party's penchant for bullying, stealth capture of government and private enterprise security and trade secrets have become too bitter to ignore -- to end up obsequiously grovelling to re-open favourable trade corridors for Canadian raw products.

 

Mr. Carney's zest for prostrating himself before human-rights-abusing states, those whose none-too-secretive advances meant to impede or outright destroy Western values, social cohesion, security and future prospects for peace and intellectual and economic advancement, has taken him further, to that most obvious of civilizational-destroying places, Qatar. Any self-respecting leader of any Western nation has but to look at their own nation's intelligence security reports' descriptions of Qatar to fully comprehend what it represents.

 

But that hasn't deterred Mr. Carney from making his mid-January trip to Doha, to appeal to its leader the emir, for a strong economic link, since they have so much to share: scientific advances, technology, agricultural best practises -- on Canada's part, investments in Canadian natural resources and production facilities presumably -- on Qatar's part. The property management colossus that Mr. Carney previously was associated with as its vice-chairman has inked a $20-billion AI investment scheme, paving the way for Canada's federal government to launch a bilateral agreement with Qatar.

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, is greeted by Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, centre, as he arrives in Doha on Jan. 18. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

 

This is Canada -- bereft of confidence in itself as a decent, human-rights-supporting, modern nation that takes pride in its traditional principles -- in allying itself with other states sharing the same values. Integrity of purpose, pride in heritage, history and culture and the decency of the social contract have gone by the wayside in favour of catering to the very countries whose aspirations are the destruction of Canada as a beacon of freedom and equality, upholding global peace and security, offering friendship to those who deserve it, and reserved distance from those who do not.

 

"The speech reads well but it's fundamentally empty when it comes to anything but rhetoric."

"But it's got the right vibes for the moment and will be praised as a work of genius when it doesn't get us anywhere beyond the absolutely obvious."

"The middle power stuff has been in every Canadian foreign policy ideas speech since the 1940s."

"Principled and pragmatic means literally nothing."

Yi Zhu, assistant professor, International Law faculty, Leiden University, Netherlands

Research associate, University of B.C. Centre for Constitutional Law and Legal Studies

 

"The 'rules-based order' described by Carney is certainly fading. It's especially been fading in our own country, where our rules and laws are no longer applicable. Our government itself has been hoping that 'compliance will buy safety'. For more than two years, Canada has complied with Islamists occupying our streets using violence and hateful profanities, yet escaping our own laws. Carney's words were as applicable internationally as they are right here at home: people participate in rituals they privately know are wrong -- by living a lie."

"Thousands of Canadians shamelessly participated in pro-Hamas marches despite knowing it's a terrorist group that murdered 1,200 people on October 7. Meanwhile, our government stood by and did nothing to protect the Jewish community, supporting Carney's belief at Davos that 'the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must'."

"Carney touts Canada's virtues of pluralism and coexistence, but our once celebrated mosaic of multiculturalism -- a national pride -- has corroded. Seventy percent of religious-based hate crimes target the Jewish community, yet our government has looked the other way. Carney was right in Davos when he said that 'The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true."

"Antisemitism is emanating from our power structures, which are permitting this false truth to persist. To apply Carney's words at Davos in a language he understands: 'We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition'. For more than 150 years, the Jewish community has been a part of the Canadian mosaic, in every aspect of professional life. Over these past two years, extreme episodes of violence, harassment and calls for 'intifada revolution' have led us to a rupture and possibly a transition to another economy."

Avi Abraham Benlolo, chairman, founder, CEO, The Abraham Global Peace Initiative 

 

"If you want a close look at the 'new world order' Prime Minister Mark Carney casually mentioned during the lavish tributes he was paying his hosts in Beijing last week, you would do well to begin by considering the components of a new high-speed Russian drone that was shot down by Ukraine's air defence division a few days ago."

"...The downed bomb was of a new long-range type, the Geran-5. It's the latest model in a line of the Iranian Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles manufactured at the Albatross Corporation's giant Yelabuga drone factory in the special economic zone in Russian Tartarstan."

Terry Glavin, National Post 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney praised the strengths of the middle powers in his special address at Davos 2026.  Image: World Economic Forum / Ciaran McCrickard

 

The Russian barrages launched by Moscow against cities across Ukraine in the past three weeks have hit highrise apartment buildings, energy infrastructure, and water and sewer systems in Dnipro, Odesa, Kharliv and Zaporzhia. In Kyiv, close to 3,000 multi-storey residential buildings are without heating and roughly 600,000 people have evacuated the city since the blitz began on New Year's Day. There  is no electricity for 60 percent of Kyiv at a time of daytime temperatures around -10C. 

 

The Geran-5 drone is distinguished as a replica of the Iranian Karrar UAV, reaching speeds of 600 km/hr with a range up to 1,000 kilometres, carrying a 90-kilogram warhead. Ukraine's military intelligence analysis of the drone's components identify the downed Geran-5 drone powered by a Chinese turbojet engine manufactured by Telefly Telecommunications in Shanzhen, Guangdong. Several of the components of the drone  were provided by Chinese companies but its electronics systems, i.e.: satellite navigation, telemetry and guidance mechanisms, were produced by US. and German manufacturers.

 

Processors, transceivers and amplifiers were manufactured by Texas Instruments in Dallas, while the drone's clock generators were manufactured by CTS Corp. an aerospace and defence industry supplier in Indiana. Monolithic Power Systems in Kirkland, Washington produced the special converter in the drone's flight controller unit. The German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies in Neubiberg outside Munich provided the transistor in the drone's power distribution unit.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

 

Interestingly reflective of the old rules-based order and its global sanctions meant to protect the innocent from their attackers, giving way to the newly adapted "realism" reflecting Prime Minister Carney's new foreign policy in tandem with Canada's allies such as France, Spain, Ireland and Great Britain. Or as Carney put it "We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be", which gave him free reign to travel to Beijing as a trade supplicant, bowing to one of the Great Power bullies he so eloquently lashed out at during his Davos delivery.

 

In rejecting Canada's largest trade partner and North American neighbour with its shared border, democratic ideals, history and culture of normalcy now that the primary Great Power is temporarily captained by a megalomaniacal bully, this latest Liberal prime minister of Canada has abased himself, detached Canada from its plinth as a principled, human-rights-defending nation to consolidate a trade 'bargain' with the world's production power in the 'realism' of 'globalization', citing a 'strategic partnership' with a hegemon that uses trade coercion no less than does U.S. President Trump. 

 

Carney and Canada by extension is not alone in his sanctimonious hypocrisy given the evidence that Mr. Trump's envoys, friends and family members are absorbed in the potential for vastly remunerative co-venture options with Moscow's sanctioned oligarchs regarding a revived Nord Stream pipeline, Arctic oil extraction, rare-earth minerals, Siberian nickel deposits and Sea of Okhotsk natural gas wells. And since Mark Carney jubilantly felt himself on a roll, getting one over on the uncertainty of U.S. trade, he continued his jetting, on to Qatar.

Prime Minister Mark Carney takes part in a welcoming ceremony with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at Amiri Diwan in Doha, Qatar on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

 

That would be the terrorist haven where the multi-millionaire leaders of Hamas live in luxury in Doha as protected, honoured guests. Qatar, known as the money faucet for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Qatar, which has invested billions in American universities as well as their Canadian counterparts, to exert its 'soft' Islamist credentials, particularly in funding the pro-Palestinian marches that have roiled the streets of Canada's cities for over two years. Qatar, whose terrorist bona fides have been laid out by government and private intelligence agencies; realities that are inconsequential to Carney's jet-setting search for new trade partners for Canada.   

"Carney was effectively wagging his finger at the United States in the highest [or lowest] tradition of its allies who graciously sheltered under the protective wing of American military power while attempting to collegialize all alliance decisions on the basis that the United States was a great mastiff which would do the work and take the risks while its European and Canadian allies held the leash and gave the instructions."

"The 'rules-based international order' was always a fraud. It was a stability based almost entirely on the deterrent and enforcement capacity that the United States possessed because of its great military and economic power."

"The idea of a group of 'middle powers' grouping together to assert themselves is a complete fantasy. Superpowers don't care about middle powers as long as other superpowers don't invade them."

Conrad Black, National Post