Finishing The Job

"It was through the cultural centre that they were allowed to spread their propaganda and they were allowed to really conduct activities outside the embassy that could have affected the Iranian people, the normal residents."  Golrokh Niazi, Iranian-Canadian human rights activist

 Canada`s Department of Foreign Affairs recalled its diplomatic staff from the Canadian Embassy in Tehran, and gave Iranian diplomats located at the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa four days to exit Canada.  They are now officially persona non grata.  Canada has severed all diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran in a move that the ousted charge d`affaires, Kambiz Sheikh-Hassani characterizes as "unwise, uncivilized and hostile."

In response to which Public Safety Minister Vic Toews added the perspective of sanity and reality by his rhetorical: "Could there by anything more uncivilized than the sponsorship of terrorist organizations, which is what Iran is doing..."

Now Iranian-Canadians are concerned that although the embassy has been closed, it is of questionable value to them when the source of intimidation arose from the Iranian Cultural Centre located at 2 Robinson Street, which remains open, for there has been no corresponding order for it to close, despite that it has been operating as a creature of the embassy.

The Iranian Cultural Centre was headed by Hamid Mohammadi, a cultural counsellor at the embassy. 

And the Carleton Iranian student group which has been closely aligned with the centre has as its president Ehsan Mohammadi, son Hamid Mohammadi, the embassy`s cultural counsellor.  Both the centre and the student group have mounted "cultural" events at venues like the university and Ottawa City Hall, celebrating the theocratic leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

At these events fanatical Islamists have been invited to speak as honoured guests.  The cultural centre has been implicated in providing anti-Semitic and anti-West printed books and a curricula structure to local Muslim schools.  And it has been a source of intimidation for many émigres.  A situation that is of great ongoing concern to these individuals.

The idea behind these "cultural" events is to present the Republic as a respectable, peace-loving country with a proud heritage and culture, bypassing what the current religiously fanatic administration really represents.  And to covertly encourage young Iranians to inveigle themselves into public service to occupy high-level key positions", and to "resist being melted into the dominant Canadian culture".

Because the Government of Canada was on the cusp of placing both Iran and its client state Syria on a newly-programmed state terror listing, it made eminently good sense to take Canadian diplomats out of possible harm`s way, although that clearly could not have been the sole or even the major impetus for sundering diplomatic relations.

Now what has begun should be brought to a neat finish by the government taking the next move, to shutter the so-called cultural centre, and taking additional steps to dissuade the students`group from its current course of culturally legitimizing a country which has been placed on a terror list, and whose diplomats have been removed from Canada.