Carney’s position on Iran changes by the day

Manitoba Tory MP and defence critic James Bezan was correct this week when he accused Prime Minister Mark Carney of being “all over the map” with our position on the U.S-Israel war in the Middle East.

In the House of Commons this week, Bezan lamented the fact that Canada had gone from supportive, to regretful and concerned, to weighing the possibility of actively supporting the attacks against Iran, all in the space of a few days. Bezan encouraged Carney to debate Canada’s role in this conflict in the House of Commons.

“It should be up to Parliament itself to say yea or nay on whether or not we’re ever going to be deploying our troops into a conflict,” Bezan told reporters on Thursday in Ottawa. “Let’s have the conversation where it should be, in public so there’s transparency, in the House of Commons.”

Bezan’s allegation is fair and accurate. Since the Americans and Israelis launched their furious attack on Iran on Feb. 28, it has been difficult to pin down Canada’s true position on U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Operation Epic Fury.”

Within hours of the commencement of hostilities, Carney released a statement saying Canada supported the attack against Iran “to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” However, within days, Carney admitted his support for the attacks came with “some regret” and that Trump’s war appears to be “inconsistent with international law.”

That change in language was then followed by another lurch in position when, on March 5, Carney told reporters in Australia he could not “categorically rule out participation” in the Iran war.

Why is Carney being so uncertain?

Clearly, Carney is trying to do his best not to provoke collateral aggression with Trump, who is deeply invested in this politically risky and complex conflict.

The week that Trump gave the green light to U.S. missile attacks on Iran, he was girding for yet another wave of criticism about his handling of the release of files related to the investigation of disgraced financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Despite making millions of pages of police files public, the Trump administration has dabbled with selective redactions. Most recently, it became clear that memos regarding an alleged rape by Trump against one of Epstein’s victims had been withheld.

Those files were released this week but the damage to Trump’s reputation was already done. Now, there is growing concern that “Operation Epic Fury,” is really — as comedians dubbed it this week — “Operation Epstein Distraction.”

These concerns are not unfounded. To date, the president has yet to enunciate a viable theory for attacking Iran. Trump’s claims that Iran was close to developing a nuclear arsenal, and that the country posed an imminent threat to the U.S. and Israel, are tenuous at best.

An unjustified war that appears to exist outside the guardrails of international law governing military action is not an easy pill for Carney to swallow. So much so, Carney appears to be choking on his own rhetoric.

In the past few months, Carney and his government have preached the doctrine of “principled pragmatism,” and for a middle power like Canada, that concept is alluring. But in this instance, it appears Canada is allowing the pragmatism to overwhelm the principle.

Canada has a history of firmly condemning or shunning cynically constructed conflicts that has established our credentials as a courageous middle power worthy of global respect. Retreating from that role in the name of pragmatism makes Canada a country that can be easily ignored.