Outlawing the IRGC as Terrorists in Canada -- So Peremptorily?

"We will do everything we can to stand against the Iranian regime."

"Enough of the brutality. Enough of the repression. Enough of the violation of fundamental human rights."

"I will stand with you. I will march with you. I will hold hands with you."

PM Justin Trudeau, addressing Iranian Canadians

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a remembrance ceremony for Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Jan. 8, 2024. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

This is the man who as leader of the Liberal Party -- while the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper took steps to neutralize the Islamic Republic of Iran's activities in Canada with the full understanding of its sinister Islamist agenda disrupting and interfering in Canadian matters, exerting influence over Iranian-Canadian affairs, tasking members of the IRGC to have a presence in Canada, interpreted by Iranian-Canadians as menacing to their rejection of the theocratic regime's agenda -- stated his intention to restore relations with Iran.

 

PM Harper invited Iranian diplomats to leave Canada. He ordered the Canadian embassy in Tehran shuttered, and all diplomatic activity to cease. He had Iranian assets seized, and made it clear that no representative of Iran had any business in Canada. Before Justin Trudeau became prime minister he stated his intention to reinstate relations with Iran as one of his more immediate goals. On taking government, the Trudeau regime lost no time overturning as many of the Conservative government's acts of governance as possible.

 

Negotiations to restore diplomatic relations with Iran failed to materialize, but not because Trudeau changed his mind, despite the regime's open and publicly-ventilated threats against Israel, despite its troubling manoeuvres as an unstable, threatening Middle Eastern country, despite its support for terrorism and its sponsorship, training and arming of Lebanon's Hezbollah acting as its proxy in committing international acts of terrorism against Jewish targets. An entire litany of reasons to sanction.

 

Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, seen here in an undated self-portrait, died in an Iranian jail in 2003

 

Trudeau's far more worthy predecessor, Stephen Harper, interpreting the death in Iran's notorious Evin Prison of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, accused of espionage itself ample reason to shun and deplore the Islamist regime, as well as its former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, promising that Israel would be 'wiped off the map', along with the IRGC, in charge of Iran's nuclear and missile program, progressing in its advance of its uranium enrichment plans for its nuclear program.

When the IRGC four years ago shot two missiles at Ukraine International Airlines PS752 as it was departing Tehran for Ukraine en route to Canada, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard, in the incredible belief that the passenger jet was an incoming U.S. ballistic missile, the resulting death of 50 Canadian-Iranians, another 30 permanent residents and more young Iranians studying at Canadian universities, along with nationals from other countries, the outrage on its very own should have been ample cause for Trudeau to recognize the IRGC as a terrorist group.

Parliamentarians representing all parties unanimously called for the government to place the IRGC on Canada's terrorist list six years ago -- and another motion passed much more recently in the House of Commons, to which the Liberal government assented, yet it made no move, despite the more than ample evidence that the Iranian Republic under its theistic regime was itself a terrorist entity, despite the desperate pleas by the Canadian-Iranians who were being tormented and threatened by the presence of IRGC agents in Canada -- yet Trudeau's government made no move to officially ban them in Canada.

Death threats issued against dissenting Iranian Canadians by IRGC agents moving about freely in Canada, the knowledge that money-laundering in the hundreds of millions to benefit Iran was occurring in a giant operation conducted in Canada, that Iranian spies had flooded the country and the Liberal government just stood by was irrational, puzzling and negligent to Canada's and its citizens best interests. When Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd was murdered by Iran's morality police for wearing her hijab too casually, Iran arrested thousands of protesters, and an estimated 550 were killed by the IRGC and the Basij militia.

Finally, after all that has happened, all that is yet to occur, orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Trudeau government has seen fit to outlaw and list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Now, the work of closing down the networks that launder $100 billion illegally for Iran in Canada must be shut down. Now, the malevolent presence of IRGC operatives in Canada must be rounded up and removed from a country they have no business intruding on. Now, the diplomatic assets of Iran in Canada should be fully dissolved.

During question period, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on why the federal government didn't move sooner on listing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity.  CBC

 

"One can equate it [Islamic Republican Guard Corps] to a large, corrupt mafia group comprising 150,000 members involved in money laundering, transnational terror, selling drugs on the black market, expropriation of property, extrajudicial killings, targeted assassinations, cyberwarfare and the spread of Islamist propaganda."

"Any time you have seen video footage of women in Iran being beaten and dragged screaming into police vans because of not properly wearing a hijab or of Christians arrested for worshipping in underground churches or Kurds being gassed or children being executed or peaceful protesters being intentionally shot at, blinded, raped or tortured, these are all the acts of the IRGC and its paramilitary subgroup, the Basij."

Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Iranian-Canadian human rights activist

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps    Getty Images

 

Proscribing Elite Members of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps Entry to Canada

"By officially designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, Canada can join the United States in once again contributing to the global fight against terrorism, demonstrating a strong commitment to ensuring peace and stability."

"In both words and deeds, the IRGC as an entity is ideologically committed to destroying Israel and undermining U.S.-Canadian security interests in the Middle East and around the world."

"The October 7, 2023 terrorist massacre by Hamas killed Israeli, American and Canadian citizens, and it was made possible by Iran and the IRGC, which have supported Canadian-designated Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas with arms, training and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for years."

U.S. Republican and Democratic Congressional Representatives 

"Canada is well known for not being able to actually implement the sanctions that it announces. Our allies know this and it annoys them, and the bad guys know this and it makes them smile."

"You're talking about hundreds of thousands of IRGC veterans. You are talking about a lot of conscripts among those IRGC vets, some of whom would have been cooks in 1996 or something like that."

Thomas Juneau, associate professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

"When drafting our terrorism laws we made a choice that we would not deal with the conduct of militaries or parties to a conflict under the criminal law, but would instead look to international law to sanction or punish unlawful conduct."

Leah West, assistant professor, national security law, Carleton University

Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend a military drill in the Aras area, East Azerbaijan province, Iran, October 19, 2022. The European Union is considering whether to join United States and officially designate the militia group as a terrorist organization. So far, Canada has refused. (IRGC/WANA/Reuters)

 

Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau was directly asked by fourteen American Congressmen through a group-signatured letter to officially designate the Islamic Republic Guard Corps of Iran as a terrorist group. Canadian parliamentarians beat them to it by a long shot, having much earlier demanded that their government commit to such a move, only to be ignored by the Trudeau Liberals. 

The House of Commons was joined by the Senate in passing resolutions in recent years, both calling for the IRGC to receive terrorist designation. The United States, Sweden, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia list the group as a terrorist entity. On Canada's list of terrorists, 73 in number, the IRGC remains absent, although its al-Quds arm is on the list.

Not to be forgotten is the tragic loss of Iranian-Canadian lives when a member of the IRGC shot down a Ukraine Airlines passenger jet, Flight 752 over Tehran just as it left the airport, on a flight from Tehran to Kyiv, en route to Canada, believing it to be an incoming U.S. missile although a missile would have been coming from a direction opposite to the flight path. Iran denied for days that two missiles destroyed the plane and all the lives within it, passengers and crew.

 

Protesters in Toronto organized by the Association of Families of Flight PS752 join others across Canada in solidarity with Iranians' continued protests against the regime. (Tyler Cheese/CBC)

As an arm of the Iranian military the IRGC is a major supporter of terrorist groups including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia terrorist militias, and Hamas. As a state sponsor of terrorism Iran is directly responsible for the Hamas attack on October 7 slaughtering over 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel, taking 240 hostage, along with foreign farm workers. The members of Congress emphasized in their letter that the IRGC facilitated the attack and needed to be stopped.

Canada's terrorist list dates from 2003. Any group on the list makes it illegal in Canada for anyone to do business with the named group or to join or participate in its actions. Which hasn't stopped 'pro-Palestinian' mobs from hoisting Hamas flags alongside Palestinian flags and signalling their support for the Hamas death-cult's heinous sadistic savagery in raping Israeli girls and women, mutilating and murdering them, along with men, the elderly and Israeli children and infants. Touting the atrocities as being in a 'just cause' of 'freedom from the occupation'.

According to an associate professor at University of Toronto, Thomas Juneau, it would merely become a  symbolic gesture to add the IRGC, achieving little in the way of consequences. Yet there are times when even symbolic gestures have their place when civilized societies have an obligation to some kind of action, even symbolically, that they unequivocally abhor and denounce such unspeakable atrocities.  It would even obligate the Canadian government to take the steps required to deny entrance to members of the IRGC into Canada.

Iranian-Canadians have complained for years to the federal government that elite members of the IRGC seem to feel free to own property in Canada, and to visit their families who live in Canada with no government authority denying them that privilege. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made some conciliatory overtures to the demands of Iranian Canadians that members of the IRGC should be forbidden entry to Canada, yet a year later, nothing has been done.

On top of adding more Iranian officials and entities to its sanctions list, the federal government is pursuing measures that would block members of the Iranian regime from entering Canada and potentially kick their family members out of the county. CBCNews