Outlawing the IRGC as Terrorists in Canada -- So Peremptorily?

"We will do everything we can to stand against the Iranian regime."

"Enough of the brutality. Enough of the repression. Enough of the violation of fundamental human rights."

"I will stand with you. I will march with you. I will hold hands with you."

PM Justin Trudeau, addressing Iranian Canadians

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a remembrance ceremony for Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Jan. 8, 2024. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

This is the man who as leader of the Liberal Party -- while the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper took steps to neutralize the Islamic Republic of Iran's activities in Canada with the full understanding of its sinister Islamist agenda disrupting and interfering in Canadian matters, exerting influence over Iranian-Canadian affairs, tasking members of the IRGC to have a presence in Canada, interpreted by Iranian-Canadians as menacing to their rejection of the theocratic regime's agenda -- stated his intention to restore relations with Iran.

 

PM Harper invited Iranian diplomats to leave Canada. He ordered the Canadian embassy in Tehran shuttered, and all diplomatic activity to cease. He had Iranian assets seized, and made it clear that no representative of Iran had any business in Canada. Before Justin Trudeau became prime minister he stated his intention to reinstate relations with Iran as one of his more immediate goals. On taking government, the Trudeau regime lost no time overturning as many of the Conservative government's acts of governance as possible.

 

Negotiations to restore diplomatic relations with Iran failed to materialize, but not because Trudeau changed his mind, despite the regime's open and publicly-ventilated threats against Israel, despite its troubling manoeuvres as an unstable, threatening Middle Eastern country, despite its support for terrorism and its sponsorship, training and arming of Lebanon's Hezbollah acting as its proxy in committing international acts of terrorism against Jewish targets. An entire litany of reasons to sanction.

 

Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, seen here in an undated self-portrait, died in an Iranian jail in 2003

 

Trudeau's far more worthy predecessor, Stephen Harper, interpreting the death in Iran's notorious Evin Prison of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, accused of espionage itself ample reason to shun and deplore the Islamist regime, as well as its former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, promising that Israel would be 'wiped off the map', along with the IRGC, in charge of Iran's nuclear and missile program, progressing in its advance of its uranium enrichment plans for its nuclear program.

When the IRGC four years ago shot two missiles at Ukraine International Airlines PS752 as it was departing Tehran for Ukraine en route to Canada, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard, in the incredible belief that the passenger jet was an incoming U.S. ballistic missile, the resulting death of 50 Canadian-Iranians, another 30 permanent residents and more young Iranians studying at Canadian universities, along with nationals from other countries, the outrage on its very own should have been ample cause for Trudeau to recognize the IRGC as a terrorist group.

Parliamentarians representing all parties unanimously called for the government to place the IRGC on Canada's terrorist list six years ago -- and another motion passed much more recently in the House of Commons, to which the Liberal government assented, yet it made no move, despite the more than ample evidence that the Iranian Republic under its theistic regime was itself a terrorist entity, despite the desperate pleas by the Canadian-Iranians who were being tormented and threatened by the presence of IRGC agents in Canada -- yet Trudeau's government made no move to officially ban them in Canada.

Death threats issued against dissenting Iranian Canadians by IRGC agents moving about freely in Canada, the knowledge that money-laundering in the hundreds of millions to benefit Iran was occurring in a giant operation conducted in Canada, that Iranian spies had flooded the country and the Liberal government just stood by was irrational, puzzling and negligent to Canada's and its citizens best interests. When Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd was murdered by Iran's morality police for wearing her hijab too casually, Iran arrested thousands of protesters, and an estimated 550 were killed by the IRGC and the Basij militia.

Finally, after all that has happened, all that is yet to occur, orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Trudeau government has seen fit to outlaw and list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Now, the work of closing down the networks that launder $100 billion illegally for Iran in Canada must be shut down. Now, the malevolent presence of IRGC operatives in Canada must be rounded up and removed from a country they have no business intruding on. Now, the diplomatic assets of Iran in Canada should be fully dissolved.

During question period, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on why the federal government didn't move sooner on listing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity.  CBC

 

"One can equate it [Islamic Republican Guard Corps] to a large, corrupt mafia group comprising 150,000 members involved in money laundering, transnational terror, selling drugs on the black market, expropriation of property, extrajudicial killings, targeted assassinations, cyberwarfare and the spread of Islamist propaganda."

"Any time you have seen video footage of women in Iran being beaten and dragged screaming into police vans because of not properly wearing a hijab or of Christians arrested for worshipping in underground churches or Kurds being gassed or children being executed or peaceful protesters being intentionally shot at, blinded, raped or tortured, these are all the acts of the IRGC and its paramilitary subgroup, the Basij."

Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Iranian-Canadian human rights activist

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps    Getty Images