Diplomatic Relations

"On this, we all agree: the people of Iran deserve free and fair elections. Not another version of the Ayatollah Khameini's never-ending shell game of presidential puppets. Not the rise of a regressive clerical military dictatorship.
"The regime is hollow. It does not have the depth, the intellect, the humanity, or the humility to bring about a better future for its people. I believe the Iranian people want change."
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs

Most certainly the Baha'i think of the Iranian regime as fascists, suffering grievous persecution within the country through its systematic and brutal suppression. And exile. While the Baha'i religion was created by Tehran-born Baha'u'llah, it has been banished as a religion in Iran, and its adherents suffer enormously. The Baha'i World Centre is now located in Haifa, Israel, in complete safety and respect.

In Iran the Baha'is are considered subhuman, irrational, illegitimate, traitors to Islam. They have been executed in the wake of closed-door trials, banned from posts in universities or government. Baha'i properties, inclusive of cemeteries, libraries, businesses and schools have been demolished or confiscated. The Iranian penal code stipulates that Baha'is may be killed with impunity and no blood money paid to their families.

The mirror-likeness of the reign of terror for Jews living in World-War II era Europe under the jackboots of Nazi Germany is being reprised in Iran for the Baha'i. Germany recognized their brotherhood with Persia, allowing them the honoured status of Aryans, noble in character and physiognomy like the ideal Germans of the Third Reich; even the Farsi language has a root similar to German.

A conference in Toronto has been mounted with the use of social media to engage with Iranians in Iran, to impress upon them that they should resist the legitimacy of the reign of terror of the ruling Ayatollahs. Canada, confessed Mr. Baird, should have become more involved in supporting the Green Movement that contested the legitimacy of the 2009 presidential election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

On the occasion of the two-day Global Dialogue conference at the University of Toronto, he vowed that this time Canada would support the Iranian democratic voices. Canada has initiated sanctions annually within the United Nations against Iran, and listed the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards along with Hezbollah as terrorist groups. Canada has severed diplomatic relations with Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran's illicit, threatening and violent flirtation with international terror, its internal human rights abuses, its nuclear weapons program clearly intended for the purpose of achieving nuclear weapons and threatening the stability of the Middle East all render ample reason for Canada to view the country as a threat to the world at large, an insult to human rights and a rogue state of monumental proportions.

Canada's Minister for Foreign Affairs urged on Iranians the prospect of a political culture of "inclusiveness and freedom" within their country. Achievable and possible with enough determination and the participation of a sufficient number of regime opponents to give the Ayatollahs reason for concern in sheer numbers of rebellion.

However, in view of the spate of arrests, torture and murder that occurred with the last protest in 2009, such a vision of successfully viable protest repeated may be rather unreasonable.

Hints of the potential of a harsh crackdown before the upcoming presidential election have come in the news of the arrest of an editor of a popular Iranian news website on charges of instigating public unrest. The people likely do indeed wish for a change in regime. How they might conceivably go about achieving it is another matter altogether.

They could, if there were enough within the country inspired by the outbreak of civil war in Syria with which outcome Iran is heavily involved, have the courage of their convictions and strike en masse for their own liberation from tyranny. But it would take great courage, against the formidable resources available to their religious leaders.

Heavily involved in piously heeding the commands of Islamic peace and security.