Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at the Canada-India Growth and Investment Forum in Mumbai on Saturday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Mark Carney wasted no time in backing U.S. military action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It was a quick decision to pick a side but also to pick from a menu.
It is hard to claim that preventing Iran from getting the bomb is the cause for this war.
It’s particularly hard because U.S. President Donald Trump provided a whole menu of justifications in the eight-minute video he released Saturday – from Iran’s nuclear-weapons program to its decades of sponsorship of terror – but really made his war about regime change in Iran.
When Mr. Carney issued a statement supporting the attacks, he offered a dose of the realpolitik he claims to espouse.
He chose to put Canada on the side of its biggest ally and trading partner when it went to war against a repressive regime that foments terror and conflict – even if the casus belli is being fudged.
He chose not to quibble over the legalities. Then he quickly ruled out any future military role.
It was, to use a phrase that Mr. Carney favours, an example of taking the world as it is, not as we wish it would be.
Like most of the world, Mr. Carney and Canada will watch from the sidelines as Mr. Trump takes a high-stakes gamble on a war of choice.
It’s hard not to hope that the gamble ends with a new and different Iranian government that reflects the will of its people and stops bankrolling terror and conflict across the Middle East. It’s hard not to worry that it is unlikely the bombing will accomplish that.
Already, U.S and Israeli airstrikes have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1989, and reportedly another 40 Iranian officials, as well as hitting Iranian ships and military facilities.
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But in places such as Libya and Iraq, the past has shown that decapitating a regime is not a sure path to democracy or peace and stability. Historically, airstrikes haven’t been a good way to organize popular rebellions to take power.
Perhaps the U.S. government has intelligence that suggests there is more hope of a happy ending than risk of the kind of chaos and casualties that Iran and its proxies are still capable of causing. Given Mr. Trump’s record and temperament, it seems just as likely to be an impulsive roll of the dice.
At any rate, for those trying to follow U.S. thinking, it’s hard to follow the leader.
Mr. Trump’s video Saturday suggested the attacks are related to the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons but also aren’t – he repeated his claim that U.S. strikes in June had obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities.
U.S. and Iranian officials had been at the table for negotiations on a nuclear deal that Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, the mediator in the talks, had said Friday was close.
All that suggests this is a war of choice not necessity.
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Perhaps Mr. Trump saw an opportunity to devastate Iran’s military after the country’s defences were weakened by U.S. and Israeli strikes in June. Perhaps he hoped to distract from political troubles at home. He certainly seems far more infatuated with the use of military force than the candidate who ran in the 2024 presidential election.
Yet Mr. Trump has previously shown a willingness to risk conflict with Iran. In his first term, he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran accepted restrictions on its nuclear program.
In 2020, Mr. Trump authorized a drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani – sparking a five-day escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions that, by a strange quirk of fate, was defused when Iranian forces mistakenly shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing 176 people, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
In June, Mr. Trump left the G7 summit in Kananaskis in Alberta to return to Washington to launch airstrikes on Iran. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, thought he was going home to work on a ceasefire.
Now, Mr. Trump is making his biggest gamble yet.
Once again, old allies aren’t in the picture. Mr. Macron said he was not informed this time, either. Strikes are being conducted in conjunction with the Israel Defence Forces but this operation isn’t backed by anything called the “international community.”
Allies had a choice to back an ally that had already decided to gamble on attacks against a disruptive, repressive regime – from the sidelines.
Mr. Carney made a hard-nosed decision to pick a side.
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