Canada’s Iran policy makes little sense

The recent and abrupt decision by the Canadian government to shut down the Iranian embassy in Ottawa has garnered a lot of discussion and speculation in Canadian news media and beyond. In response to the official explanation that condemns Iran as “the most significant threat to global peace and security,” critics have either accused the Canadian government of calculated political subterfuge — with Canada’s former ambassador to Iran even suggesting that the move anticipates an Israeli strike against it — or the “irrationality” of a diplomatically novice government.

These criticisms have emphasised the necessity of keeping lines of communication open. While sometimes referencing the upkeep of communication between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, they would do better to note that even all of Iran’s neighbouring governments continue to maintain full diplomatic relations with it. These are governments with which the Islamic Republic has had a turbulent history, featuring terse political disputes and even military conflict. In fact, it was only earlier this month that Bahrain decided to reinstate its ambassador to Iran.

As the controversy surrounding the issue continues, it is worth re-examining some of the purported wisdom of the decision and the political rationale informing it.

To begin with, the closure has been welcomed by the political right in Canada with a view that it may allegedly enable the advancement of democracy in Iran by sending a message of solidarity to “peace-loving Iranians,” as one prominent Iranian-Canadian put it. Yet, like most polemic, the notion lacks detail.

This Iranian government, to be sure, is suffering an acute legitimacy crisis — ongoing economic corruption, along with the violence with which it enforces its prescribed moral regime and quells dissent, have seen to that. What remains unclear, however, is precisely how excommunicating it would further detract from this political legitimacy when a long-standing pillar of its ideological platform has been that Western governments cannot be trusted as political partners. In fact, the premise of conspiracy is inextricably tied to normative characterisations of the “West” in the discourses of the Islamic Republic.

The paradigm of a “dialogue among civilisations” that was put forth by Syed Mohammad Khatami, and effectively put to rest by George W. Bush’s “axil of evil,” was intended to disrupt precisely this kind of politics. Unfortunately, the embassy closure has only vindicated it — as evidenced by the (state newspaper) Keyhan’s front-page story appearing the next day that explains it to have been the result of a far-flung conspiracy involving England, the US and Israel.

The point here is not that the wider Iranian public is susceptible to such superficial state rhetoric. Rather, it is that the government will exploit this event as yet another indicator of foreign aggression which in its view justifies the continued muzzling of its opposition; as yet another opportunity to sow discord in Iranian society by rallying its social base against so called “infiltrators,” which is to say any Iranian willing to direct their dissent towards their own government while foreign nations explicitly threaten war.

Nor is it clear how the closure works to dignify human rights. Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, has repeatedly invoked this issue by citing the Iranian government’s dismal “track record” of violations.

Iranian society, however, is currently under severe pressure as a result of a sprawling and unprecedented regime of sanctions. These are the economic risks Iranians are exposed to because of the ongoing collapse of their currency, the health risks they are forced to incur in the face looming shortages of basic medical imports and the risk of unemployment they face as layoffs are occurring owing to the inability of local businesses to access foreign markets or pay for foreign supplies. Remarkably, proponents of the closure — the very same who decry the state of human rights in Iran — continue to welcome it as a move towards even further sanctions. The effect will be to ensure that the violations of civil and political rights are increasingly accompanied by violations of the rights to social security, health and labour of ordinary Iranians.

Baird’s comments, however, hint at what is likely one of the underlying reasons informing the closure. It’s been noted that by cutting ties, Canada has lost its foothold in Iran and will remain in the dark regarding current events there — thereby unable to continue tracking the very “track record” to which Baird refers. Yet, in a certain way, this decision is actually quite in keeping with a political logic informing the domestic policies of the Conservative Stephen Harper government: The logic of strategic ambiguity.

This government has increasingly been criticised in Canada for a variety of policies and decisions that have worked to disable the production and dissemination of certain kinds of information. Many of these measures, sometimes branded as the “Tory war on information,” have heavily favoured Canada’s booming oil-industry. They include the dismantling of the highly regarded Environmental Lakes Area research lab and a budget bill that saw numerous government scientific posts along with other environmental research projects cancelled. Similar moves have seen the elimination of the ‘long-gun registry’ that had been the bane of many western and often politically Conservative Canadians — despite outcries from law enforcement agencies that rely on this information. Then there is the unprecedented step of taking to court the country’s Auditor General in order to prevent discrepancies in the financing of a major military purchase from becoming public. In all, the idea here has been to mitigate oversight through the restriction of information.

Where these policies align with its recent decision to disconnect itself from the domestic politics of a major player in the Middle East, is that through them the Harper government can avoid the complications that arise when the “facts on the ground” challenge either it’s particular vision of Canada or the shifting political fault lines of the Middle East. Ambiguity, in other words, can be empowering.

This logic of strategic ambiguity neatly aligns with what has recently been described as “black box thinking” — or a schematic approach to foreign policy whereby the complexities of domestic politics in other courtiers are glossed over in favour of reductive tropes: “This country is essentially a rogue actor at war with western civilisation whereas that one is essentially just like us.”

So, if Iranians should begin to vent their anger at foreign governments, in addition to their own over their rapidly diminishing standards of living, or should the Iranian government decided to be more flexible on its nuclear programme, these inconvenient truths will not immediately complicate the Harper government’s “black box” called Iran. Instead, the certainty and conviction derive from strategic ambiguity will continue to see this Conservative government shun diplomacy and opt for jingoism instead.

Behzad Sarmadi is a PhD candidate of social anthropology at the University of Toronto and recent blogger at IranPolitico.com