The real roadblock to better relations is Tehran

The Islamic Republic of Iran must take delight in commentators in the West who advance the regime’s public relations agenda free of charge.

Here in Canada, one analyst claims that normalizing ties with Iran will be difficult because the Harper government craftily left behind two “booby traps:” a bill called the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (JVTA) and a concomitant designation of Iran as a supporter of terrorism. The former enables Canadians to sue local and state sponsors of terrorism for compensation for terrorist attacks,  the latter renders Iran vulnerable to these types of lawsuits.

Here is an alternate theory: Iranian misbehaviour has booby-trapped relations between the two countries over the last 36 years.

In November 1979, militant Iranian students in co-ordination with radical clerics stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 people hostage for 444 days. The Iranian security establishment did nothing to stop the takeover, while Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of post-Islamic Revolution Iran, praised the perpetrators for their illegal acts.

Ambassador Ken Taylor, first secretary John Sheardown and their colleagues at the Canadian embassy in Tehran sheltered and ultimately smuggled out six American diplomats who had evaded capture, despite great danger to everyone involved. The rescue became part of a proud Canadian narrative of courage, ingenuity and moral conviction.

Fast forward to 2007, when Iran twice attempted to install ambassadors in Ottawa who were allegedly linked to the hostage taking. Canada rightly rejected the nominees. Iran reacted as the aggrieved party, expelling from Iran the eminently suitable Canadian ambassador in retaliation.

But it was perhaps the murder of Zahra Kazemi that most severely fractured Canada-Iran relations. Kazemi was a naturalized Canadian citizen who visited Iran, her country of origin, as a freelance photojournalist in 2003. She had been granted a permit allowing her to take pictures of the daily lives of Iranians, but was arrested photographing protesters outside the Evin prison in Tehran. Detained by Iranian authorities, she was beaten, sexually assaulted and tortured. She was eventually transferred, unconscious, to an Iranian hospital, with a brain injury, fractured nose, crushed eardrum, wounds on her back and legs, fractured bones and broken nails on her hands and toes, and extensive trauma on and around her genital area.

The Iranian government refused to allow Kazemi’s family to see her and failed to contact Canadian consular officials. When Canadian personnel found out any way and visited Kazemi in hospital, they were informed that she was medically brain dead and would not recover. Despite the explicit wishes of her family, the medical staff at the hospital removed Kazemi from life support and pronounced her dead. The Iranian regime then refused to return her remains to Canada, contrary to the pleas of her family, and she is still buried in Iran. 

Canadian leaders — Liberal and Conservative alike — decried the murder and urged Iranian authorities to conduct a fair investigation into the case. Instead, the regime has yet to hold anyone accountable. On the contrary: Tehran’s prosecutor general at the time, Saeed Mortazavi, likely responsible for and certainly present during Kazemi’s torture, was sent to Geneva in 2006 as part of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials continue to arrest Canadians, often those travelling to Iran to visit ailing family members, for crimes like “insulting the sanctity of Islam” and “insulting Iran’s supreme leader.” These Canadians join the ranks of journalists and human rights defenders who are locked up in Iranian jails. The regime crushes pro-democracy uprisings; tortures inmates as they enter the prison system; boasts the world’s highest per capita rate of executions; sentences girls to death for minor criminal acts; and persecutes members of the LGBT community and religious and ethnic minorities. Iran’s vast human rights violations, unimproved under the highly touted “moderation” of President Hassan Rouhani, continue to put a heavy strain on Canada-Iran relations.

Indeed, since 2003, Canada has led an annual resolution at the UN General Assembly to draw attention to the human rights situation in Iran. Worth noting is that the Liberals, not the Conservatives, were in government when the resolution was first put forth, and now back in power, continue to take a tough line on Iranian domestic repression. And while the JVTA was passed in 2012 during Stephen Harper’s term in office, it was supported by MPs of all parties because it was an important bill that sought to deter terror financing.

Victor Comras, who was tasked by UN secretary general Kofi Annan to oversee the implementation of Security Council measures against terrorism, best articulated the premise of the JVTA: “The fact is that most major terrorism’s financial abettors and supporters … have successfully avoided criminal prosecution … Civil liability cases … associated with terrorism may constitute the best constraints we have against their activities and our best chances to hold them accountable.”

How could the JVTA have been a Harper booby trap, when Liberal minister of justice Irwin Cotler had introduced an even stronger version of the bill? Was Bob Rae, who testified in favour of this type of legislation, also conspiring with Harper to booby trap Canada-Iran relations?

After the passage of the JVTA, Ottawa listed Iran and Syria as state supporters of terrorism. That was not intended as a booby trap, but a public designation based entirely on fact, with Iran having been implicated in terrorist attacks in Beirut in 1983, Berlin in 1992, Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, and Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012, as well as the failed plots to bomb New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2007 and a restaurant in Washington, D.C., in 2011. Moreover, the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Hamas and Hezbollah, all listed terrorist entities in Canada, continue to receive critical support and direction from Iran.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama, who doggedly pursued a nuclear agreement with Iran, is emphatic that the regime continues to sponsor terrorism. Thus, in the United States, while many nuclear sanctions have been lifted and relations with Tehran begin to thaw, Iran’s designation as a state sponsor of terror remains intact.

Similarly, the listing of Iran as a state sponsor of terror under the JVTA does not impede Ottawa from re-establishing diplomatic and business connections. If Tehran demands that the terror designation be dropped as a precondition to re-engagement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must uncompromisingly echo his foreign minister on this issue: Iran will remain a state supporter of terrorism under Canadian law until Iran stops supporting terrorism.

Canada-Iran relations did not spontaneously disintegrate during Harper’s tenure. They have been poor for 36 years, under both Liberal and Conservative governments, due to Iran’s terrorist activity and financing; its violent human rights abuses; and its flagrant contravention of diplomatic and international law. Once Tehran ceases this illegal conduct, and perhaps even returns the remains of Zahra Kazemi to her son in Canada as a measure of good faith, Ottawa can drop its sanctions against Iran under the Special Economic Measures Act and the designation of Iran as a state supporter of terror.

The only impediment to normalizing ties between the two countries is Iranian malfeasance.

Sheryl Saperia is director of policy for Canada at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.Follow her on Twitter @sherylsap