As Donald Trump looks set to escalate a strategically disastrous war on Iran, Canada is ramping up its assistance. Canada adopted a new set of illegal sanctions against the country yesterday.
In Ottawa’s latest bid to weaken Iran economically Canada sanctioned five individuals and four entities. Foreign affairs minister Anita Anand announced that “Canada will impose consequences on those who contribute to Iran’s destabilizing activities and will not tolerate actions that undermine regional and international peace and security.” In the latest in a slew of government statements suggesting Iran instigated the violence Anand added, “Canada will continue to take concrete action to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities, uphold international law and stand with the Iranian people as they seek freedom, dignity and respect for their human rights.”
Sanctioning the victim of US/Israeli aggression adds to Canada’s multifaceted support for the illegal war. Suggesting the sanctions reflect Canada advocating for “the Iranian people”, as Anand did, is a remarkable inversion of reality.
Imposing sanctions while repeatedly claiming Canada will “uphold international law” is also audacious. Most countries and international law experts believe sanctions are only legitimate when approved by the World Trade Organization or United Nations Security Council. Economic sanctions outside the framework of the UN charter are generally considered “unilateral” and unlawful. According to the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization report “Unilateral and Secondary Sanctions: An International Law Perspective”, “the imposition of unilateral and secondary sanctions on countries through application of national legislation is not-permissible under international law.”
Rather than a nonviolent measure, sanctions are akin to a medieval siege designed to starve a city or fortress into submission. Unilateral sanctions run afoul of the principle of self-determination and people’s right to development. In The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights a trio of authors note: “Unilateral economic sanctions (as opposed to multilateral UN measures under Chapter VII of the Charter) imposed by one State or group of States on another, to compel the latter to change a particular political or economic policy, could amount to a prohibited intervention and a denial of self-determination.” Similarly, the UN Human Rights Council says “unilateral coercive measures are major obstacles to the implementation of the Declaration on the Right to Development.”
But Ottawa doesn’t care. Canada has imposed dozens of rounds of sanctions on Iran. According to Thursday’s release, “Canada has now sanctioned 227 Iranian individuals and 260 Iranian entities.” After Russia, Iran is probably Canada’s most sanctioned country.
Ottawa has also enabled the illegal theft of Iranian government assets. In 2022 an Ontario court awarded $107 million in Iranian assets to family members of six people who died in Flight PS752. Amidst the tension caused by the January 3, 2020, US assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military mistakenly downed the Ukraine International Airlines Flight, killing over 50 Canadians and 30 permanent residents.
In the fall of 2019 Canada seized and sold $28 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto to compensate individuals in the US who had family members killed in a 2002 Hamas bombing in Israel and others who were held hostage by Hezbollah in 1986 and 1991. The Supreme Court of Canada and federal government sanctioned the seizure under the 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which lifts immunity for countries labeled “state sponsors of terrorism” to allow individuals to claim their non-diplomatic assets. Iran is the only country on Canada’s “state sponsors of terrorism” (with a former Al-Qaeda leader now in charge of the country Syria was removed from Canada’s state terror list in December).
At the time Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi correctly called the seizure “illegal” and in “direct contradiction with international law” while a spokesperson for Iran’s Guardian Council, Abbasali Kadkhodaei, accused Canada of “economic terrorism”. As I detailed at the time, in a right side up world the Iranian asset sale would lead to various far more legitimate seizures of US, Israeli, Saudi or Canadian government assets.
We should categorically oppose Canadian diplomatic asset seizures and sanctions on Iran. They are part of a longstanding US-led war on the country, which Donald Trump has escalated into cataclysmic conflict.
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