War against Iran
Canada, stay cool and on sidelines
The United States has decided on war against Iran, after a long military build-up in the region and after negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program seemed to have stalled. In any case, the Trump regime has decided that diplomacy is over. Always recall Winston Churchill’s famous maxim, “jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” For Trump’s message to the US on the justification for starting a war, see the video released earlier this morning. [1] It’s full of bombast, a rehash of history, some false claims. Its basic message? Iran is wicked. Yes, of course.
Remember, the fact that a regime has an odious government that does terrible harm to its own people is not a reason for engaging in a pre-emptive war against it.
The US is going to war without allies, other than Israel, without any discernible just war justification, without any cover of international law, and certainly without any effort to convince the United Nations or rally international support. It is all so different from the US war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
A US war on Iran lacks clear objectives and has an unforeseeable outcome. Is the war to further prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, after the Trump regime proclaimed the Iranian nuclear weapons program annihilated? Is it to collapse Iran’s missile arsenal or to further damage any support that Iran can still extend to proxy groups in the region, despite the fact that Iran is a notably weakened power. Is it a war to further cement Israeli security in the Middle East? Is it a war to achieve regime change? How do you achieve that without a full-scale invasion, and what regime does the US imagine will come to the rescue of the Iranian people? Is it a war by a flailing US President whose domestic support is waning. Is it a war whose Commander in Chief is surrounded by yes-men and insulated from his own intelligence system.
Initial European Union reaction to the US attacks is to urge “maximum restraint.”
Our PM, Mark Carney, on the other hand, from the distance of his trip to India, has come out in full support of the US action. He has simply echoed the Trump administration’s speaking points.
That is a terrible mistake. The Carney government’s first major error in the realm of foreign policy. It would have been better to take a leaf from the Chretien government’s response to the US intention to go to war against Iraq in 2003. No thanks.
It seems we still struggle to unhook ourselves from thought and policy dependency on the United States, despite a brave speech in Davos.
[1] CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/28/us/video/trump-video-us-israel-iran-strike-hnk-digvid
I agree with Wesley Wark on this one. The Prime Minister should have refrained from even verbal support. He might even have just quietly, preemptively said we would not be providing assistance. I am someone who admires Carney greatly and can generally find justification in whatever he does. I do, for instance, believe his decision to go to Tumbler Ridge instead of Munich was compassionate and wise. But here, we should have firmly differentiated Canada from this tempting but utterly cynical operation.
I have to ask — completely ingenuously, sarcastically and cynically — why the US does not just bomb Russia, if it wants to effect regime change in an authoritarian state where citizens are routinely oppressed.
Bad take on CAN Government initial reaction from an otherwise and usually on-point analyst. There is big difference from providing verbal support as PM Carney has done, and overt active military support. The option to condemn the US/ISR operation would be a strategic mistake of highest order.
Iran is a murderous regime not just against its own people but for decades against its neighbours.