Israel Matzav: Canada closes embassy in Iran, expels Iranian diplomats

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Canada closes embassy in Iran, expels Iranian diplomats

Canada has closed its embassy in Iran, expelled all Iranian diplomats from Canada and suspended all diplomatic relations with the mullahcracy. The move by foreign affairs minister John Baird on Friday was sudden and unexpected (Hat Tip: Pat M).

Baird branded Iran as the “most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”

He cited a list of long-standing beefs with the regime in Tehran as justification for the abrupt move, including Iranian military assistance to Syria and its refusal to comply with United Nations resolutions on its nuclear program.

“It routinely threatens the existence of Israel and engages in racist anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide; it is among the world’s worst violators of human rights,” Baird told reporters in Vladivostok, Russia.

Pressed on why Canada decided to act now on grievances it’s had for months and years, Baird said only, “There’s just a long list of reasons why we’re coming to this decision.”

But he said the main motivation was an attack on the British embassy in Tehran nine months ago and worries that Canadian diplomats were in danger.

“It just got to a point where we just are very uncomfortable putting their lives at risk, and I’ll tell you . . . this is a decision obviously we don’t take lightly,” said Baird as he arrived in the Russian city for a meeting of APEC leaders.

Yet the sudden decision immediately provoked speculation that the long-discussed military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel and others was imminent, a suggestion that Baird’s office later sought to downplay.

The decision was announced after a skeleton staff of about eight Canadian foreign affairs employees had already returned home from Iran. There are about 17 workers in the Iranian embassy and they’ve been given five days to leave Canada, a foreign affairs official said.

The federal government is also urging Canadians to avoid travel to Iran.

A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Ramin Mehmanparast, called Canada’s decision “hasty and extreme” and said that Iran would soon respond, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

But the diplomatic ousting won applause in other quarters, including from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Canada also had some domestic considerations.

The latest move also comes amid accusations that officials working out of the Iranian embassy in Ottawa have been attempting to infiltrate the Iranian community in Canada.

“These activities using cultural organizations, student groups, as fronts have seen to be aimed at infiltrating the Iranian diaspora and neutralizing opposition to the regime,” said Payam Akhavan, a law professor at McGill University and founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre.

“Many of us involved in human rights activities have had to contend with the infiltration of our community by individuals who are effectively agents of the regime,” he said in an interview Friday.

Over the course of the Sabbath, I finished reading Reza Khalili's book A Time to Betray (that's not his real name - it's a pseudonym). 'Khalili' is an Iranian who volunteered to be a CIA agent in Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the 1980's, and also spent about a year and a half as a double agent in London, continuing serving the CIA while the Guards thought he was working for them. He is now living in California under a name other than Khalili and does not go out in public without a mask. Every Iranian embassy around the world is full of Revolutionary Guards and is used to spy on Iranians in the host country. It's not surprising that the Iranian embassy in Ottawa would be attempting to infiltrate the local community. I'm glad that the Canadians were strong enough to put a stop to it.

Iran may yet retaliate.

Labels: Canada, Iranian nuclear threat, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, John Baird, Reza Khalili