The NDP should apologize for enabling the US/Israeli war on Iran. The party has long assisted imperial aggression, which has escalated to a cataclysmic war.
Caitlin Johnstone recently posted, “Can’t get over how many leftists bought into the ‘we support the Iran protests’ schtick. Where the fuck did you idiots think this was headed? What did you think you were promoting when you assisted the US empire’s regime change sloganeering throughout the west? Fucking morons.”
Many Canadian leftists have contributed to the Zionist/US empire campaign against Iran. Over the past fifteen years the NDP has broadly backed Canada’s low-level war on Iran, pressing for more sanctions and listing part of its military a terror organization.
Amidst the January protests/destabilization that set the stage for Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump to unleash their war, NDP foreign critic Heather McPherson posted a long statement commending “the bravery of Iranians protesting the regime”, which boasted that she’d long promoted sanctioning Iran and listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp a terrorist organization. There was nothing in the 700-word statement about the Israeli/US role in stoking, funding and arming the protests in Iran or their role in the sanctions and currency manipulation, which sparked the initial demonstrations.
McPherson has worked with monarchist and reactionary Iranian forces. In 2024 she posted: “Great news – Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has been freed! Working with Iranian Justice Collective, I secured a unanimous consent motion in Parliament to impose targeted sanctions on officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corp. Women Life Freedom.” The top item on the Iranian Justice Collective’s X account when this author looked was a column in the Jerusalem Post calling for regime change in Iran from monarchist Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay, wife of former Conservative minister Peter MacKay. A half dozen posts below the article in the Israeli paper was a post from a senior fellow at the hard right Canadian-government connected Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Kaveh Shahrooz, stating “The ICC [Iranian Canadian Congress] is a fifth column organization operating in Canada.”
In January 2023 McPherson released a statement headlined “NDP MP calls on Liberals to explain their inaction on supporting Iranian protestors.” Despite the misleading headline, the statement was about McPherson submitting a motion to the Foreign Affairs Committee to study listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
NDP backing aggression against Iran predates McPherson. In my 2018 Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada I wrote:
“The NDP also failed to oppose Canada’s low-level war against Iran. During Stephen Harper’s reign Canadian naval vessels ran provocative manoeuvres off Iran’s coast, Canadian troops occupied a bordering state, Ottawa targeted Iran at the UN, listed that country as a state sponsor of terrorism and cut off diplomatic relations with Iran. The NDP largely ignored these developments and in September 2012 NDP foreign critic Paul Dewar was rebuffed by party leader Tom Mulcair after he meekly criticized the Conservatives’ move to sever diplomatic ties. ‘For us to make a difference, we have to be there [in Iran],’ Dewar told CTV News. ‘We have to show up, and now we’re walking away.’
“But that was too much for Mulcair. ‘I think one of the concerns that Paul [Dewar] was expressing there was with Canadians who are currently in prison, so it becomes difficult for them. But it’s also becoming increasingly clear that there were serious concerns, we don’t have the same information but it would appear that there might be some very solid information that would have led the government to that decision [to cut relations with Iran], so until we have that information it’s hard to comment further.’ In other words, the government can do what they want to Iran because they have more information on the matter. Instead of questioning Ottawa’s low-level war, the NDP joined the attacks. In 2013, 2014 and 2015 Dewar cosponsored Iran Accountability Week, which was put on by Israeli nationalist MP Irwin Cotler. Another repeated participant in Iran Accountability Week was Mark Dubowitz who Ynet, Israel’s largest English language news site, dubbed ‘The Man Who Fights Iran’.”
Rather than take principled foreign policy positions based on international law and respect for the human rights of all, Canada has a long and consistent history of supporting whatever the dominant imperialist power wanted in Iran.
Canada supported the British Empire’s post-World War I bid to extract Iranian oil. Ottawa backed the oil embargo in response to Iran’s first popularly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, seeking to benefit from the country’s natural resources and played a small part in the US and Britain’s 1953 coup. Establishing diplomatic relations with Iran just after Mossadegh was overthrown, Canada deepened political and economic ties with the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, which ruled for 26 years. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution Ottawa severed diplomatic ties and throughout the 1980s Canada sold arms to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which instigated a brutal war on Iran. At the end of that decade Ottawa restarted diplomatic relations, which remained tense through the 1990s. In the mid 2000s the Harper government ramped up hostility, severing diplomatic ties and listing that country a state sponsor of terror in 2012. While there was an effort to shift gears early in Justin Trudeau’s mandate, the Israel lobby scuttled a push to restart diplomatic ties backed by elements of corporate Canada (Bombardier wanted to sell Iran airplanes). After the first Trump administration ripped up the JCPOA nuclear accord, introduced major sanctions and killed general Soleimani, Canadian policy became steadily more hostile. Rather than challenge Ottawa on Iran, the NDP has often criticized the Liberals for not taking more aggressive positions.
In the past few weeks, since the US/Israel unleashed their full-scale aggression, NDP interim leader Don Davies has repeatedly criticized a war that is already deeply unpopular with the Canadian public. While this shift is admirable, it is part of a more odious history that should be acknowledged if the party truly wants to turn from away pro-imperialist foreign policy positions.
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