The Green Party of Canada condemns the US military attack on Iran, and reasserts its condemnation of the Iranian regime’s brutal slaughter of its own people who have courageously taken to the streets in protest.
US President Donald Trump has defended the attack by blaming Iran’s refusal to negotiate a new deal to end its nuclear programme. What Trump fails to mention is that there was a deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated by the Obama administration and backed by rigorous international monitoring, was working until Trump himself tore it up during his first term.
As Greens, we have contacts with a small and beleaguered Green Party of Iran that joins us in condemning the brutal repression of the Iranian regime. But open warfare in a region that is already a tinderbox serves no one’s security, least of all the Iranian people.
Canada has essentially signed on to the US assault. In a statement issued today the Liberal government declared that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East” and that “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” What the statement does not contain is equally telling: no mention of the deal Trump tore up, no call for a ceasefire or de-escalation, and no assertion of any independent Canadian diplomatic role.
As a middle power with a historic role in peace-building, Canada should do better. We urge the Canadian government to speak truth to power, to state our commitment to achieving peace and disarmament, and to the protection of human rights and innocent lives in Iran.
“Canada should call out the Trump administration’s self-serving historical revisionism, its refusal to acknowledge its own role in undermining peace by unilaterally ripping up a deal that was working,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “Doing so may improve our standing and our potential role in negotiating peace, a suspension of hostilities, and ideally a multilateral process to protect Iranian civilians. Previous US-imposed regime change in Iran has not ended well. History repeating itself is not inevitable, but ignoring history hastens inevitable horrors.”
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