Iranian Infiltration in Canada?

"Masoud [Molavi] talked to me about someone by the name of Majid Jowhari. He’s a member of the Parliament of Canada. He’s from the Liberal Party, representing Richmond Hill."
"He said that Jowhari was in touch with some of the intelligence officers of Iran, and that he even visited the representatives of Taeb and Mojtaba Khamenei. He even received financial support from these people."
"Now he’s been elected in Canada for a second time."
Alireza Sassani, Iranian Freelance journalist

"Our government’s position [Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] is that Canada severing ties with Iran had no positive consequences for anyone, not for Canadians, not for the people of Iran, not for our Canadian allies, and not for global security."
"In a recent program aired on two Persian language broadcasts, without a shred of evidence, I was accused of having connections to officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These accusations are absolutely false and unfounded."
"Those who spread these slanderous and baseless accusations want to instigate hate and fear without providing a single fact to support it. We should stand together against this hateful behaviour."
MP Majid Jowhari, Liberal MP for Richmond Hill, Ontario

Liberal MP Majid Jowhari rises to vote during a marathon voting session in the House of Commons Thursday, March 21, 2019 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"I would like to hear from the prime minister what the story is with an MP who seems to take a position that is supportive of the Islamic regime of Iran and is not aligned with Canadian values."
"There have been demonstrations in Iran in which hundreds of people have been murdered and he has never said a word about that."
Senator Linda Frum, Senate of Canada

Of the Richmond Hill riding that Mr. Jowhari represents, there are 21,000 Iranian-Canadians, representing eleven percent of that population. Most of those of Iranian background have no use whatever for the theocratic regime known for its support of terrorism, its efforts to interfere and destabilize the Middle East, its threatening nuclear program, its promises to annihilate the State of Israel and the intrusive actions of its diplomatic staff deployed to Ottawa, all of which caused former Prime Minister Stephen Harper to break diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime in 2012.

When Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada campaigned during the 2015 general election, one of his stated goals on the international front was to restore relations with Iran, despite its interference in Syria, its support for the Syrian regime which was responsible for the deaths of at least a half million Syrian Sunnis and the displacement of millions of Syrians, flooding Europe and living in refugee camps internally and abroad.

The online video Mr. Jowhari spoke of accused him of working with the Iranian regime. Those Iranian elites to which his association was referred, included the son of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, while the Taeb referred to is a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard and head of Iran’s intelligence operations. Strange acquaintances for a Canadian Member of Parliament. Masoud Molavi had been an associate of the reporter who interviewed him in Turkey as an opponent of the Iranian regime whom Turkish media identified as a defected former Iranian spy.

Mojtaba, son of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, attends the annual Quds, or Jerusalem Day rally in Tehran, Iran, Friday, May 31, 2019. (Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press)

A drive-by assassination in Istanbul in November took the man's life, and thus placed him out of the way as an irritant. Turkey employing state assassination, the kind of sloppy nuisance-targeting Russian agents are infamous for, and which Saudi Arabia was embarrassed by when their agents killed and dismembered a Saudi critic, a journalist with a murky past, which Recep Tayyip Erdogan was delighted to accuse the Saudis of, as though such a ghoulish performance would be entirely out of his lexicon of activities.

The difference, of course, is that Turkey's relations with the Saudis is clouded, while Turkish-Iranian relations are rock-solid. For the time being, in any event. In Canada, Senator Frum pointed out that Jowhari has not been known to state any position critical of the Iranian regime, representing a large Iranian-Canadian population notwithstanding, in light of the recent mass protests in Iran and the government's violent repression and murders of protesters, well practised in Syria.

Jowhari had presented a petition in the House of Commons for the government to re-establish diplomatic relations with Tehran, an unsurprising move, given Trudeau's 2015 posturing, but surprising in the context of Canadian Iranians having moved in great numbers to Canada in the wake of the Iranian Revolution 40 years ago. And yet he cordially met with members of the Iranian parliament in 2016 when they visited Canada. An issue he explained as "a parliamentarian with a significant diaspora", the visitors were interested in meeting with him.

Dec 12 interview with a close associate of Masoud Molavi

"It just means we are sitting at the same table and working on understanding the issues and we as Canadians have serious concerns. If we don't tell them, who will?"

Which, given so many conflicting details leads to doubts of his veracity and his loyalties.