Canada’s relations with Tehran stuck in deep freeze, despite Iranian hopes

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The former Canadian embassy in Tehran is empty and locked. The tiles and stairs at the front entrance are broken and crumbling. “Please do not smoke here,” says a sign on the wall.

On the ground-floor windows, a visitor might notice the faint traces of the maple leaves that were removed long ago – the last fading sign of the Canadian presence.

After a 13-year diplomatic freeze, Canada is invisible in Iran. It is one of the few major countries without an embassy here. An attempted rapprochement between the two countries in 2017 was shattered by events over the following years, including Iran’s shootdown of a passenger jet with dozens of Canadians on board. Today there is only silence in the diplomatic channels.

Many people in Iran still hope that the two governments can eventually patch up their differences. Canada has the world’s second-biggest Iranian diaspora, numbering about 300,000 people, and commentators have often noted the potential linkages between the two countries in business and other sectors.

“I think there’s a great opportunity,” says Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former Iranian vice-president who is now an academic and an influential reformist.

“I don’t think there are any negative feelings about Canada,” she told The Globe and Mail in Tehran. “I think the Iranian government would welcome any initiative to improve relations and re-establish the ties that we had at one time.”

Canada’s diplomatic relations with Iran were severed in 2012 by then-prime minister Stephen Harper, who criticized Iran’s human-rights record, its hostility to Israel and its support for terrorist groups. In the federal election three years later, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau promised to restore relations. His government sent officials to Tehran for preliminary talks in 2017.

But the negotiations were shelved in the following year after Canadian-Iranian professor Kavous Seyed-Emami died under mysterious circumstances in a Tehran prison and his widow was banned from returning to Canada, provoking protests from the federal government. Two years later, the Iranian military shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 near Tehran, killing all 176 people on board, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

Since then, Canada has imposed a series of sanctions on Iranian officials and military commanders, accusing them of committing gross human-rights violations and sponsoring terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It has also maintained its earlier trade restrictions on the country for its nuclear program. And it has taken legal action against Iran at the International Court of Justice and the International Civil Aviation Organization over the Flight 752 shootdown.

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Official relations remain so frosty today that staff from Iran’s foreign ministry were unwilling to meet The Globe to discuss Canadian issues during a recent two-week visit to Tehran. They also declined to answer any written questions from The Globe.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said she has not had any formal or informal contacts with Iranian officials since she took office in 2021. “Our strategy is to put maximum pressure on Iran,” she told The Globe in an interview. “We believe they’re part of the problem in the Middle East and around the world. A lot of Canadians have their loved ones in prison in Iran.”

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Many analysts have noted the potential benefits for both countries if diplomatic links are some day restored. Canadian investors for years have eyed the business opportunities in Iran’s vast oil and gas sector. As recently as 2016, the federal government voiced its hopes that Canada’s aviation industry could sell airplanes to Iran as soon as sanctions were lifted. On the Iranian side, Prof. Ebtekar talks optimistically about the potential for Canada-Iran co-operation in scientific research and green technology.

The large Iranian diaspora in Canada is another key factor. There are so many Iranian-Canadians in Toronto – about 90,000 – that the city is sometimes jokingly known in Iran as “Tehranto.” While some in the diaspora are strongly opposed to the Iranian government, others would like to see an improvement in relations, if only to make travel and other connections easier.

An analysis in 2022, published by the Canadian International Council, an independent think tank, argued that the normalization of relations with Iran would be in Canada’s national interests – especially at times of crises, such as the Flight 752 shootdown, when Canadian consular officials struggled for permission to enter Iran. But the analysis acknowledged that a reopening of the Canadian embassy is unlikely, partly because it would be vulnerable to potential attacks by demonstrators, as other Western embassies have suffered over the years.

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Foad Izadi, a professor of world studies at the University of Tehran, said he is surprised at the continuing freeze between the two countries. “There could be a lot of economic, political and cultural linkages,” he told The Globe. “We love Canada. It’s a good country.”

But others are less optimistic. Manouchehr Mottaki, a former Iranian foreign minister with links to conservative factions, is skeptical about the chances of reconciliation. He recalls tensions between the two governments when he was foreign minister from 2005 to 2010, and his memory even goes back to 1980, when Canada helped rescue six American diplomats during the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy.

“In my 40 years in foreign policy, I cannot see a very positive picture of Canada in Iran,” said Mr. Mottaki, who is now a member of parliament. “The feeling of our people is that Canada doesn’t have an independent foreign policy.”

He scoffs at the rapprochement efforts from 2015 to 2017. “We didn’t take it seriously, because there weren’t any practical steps by the Canadians. There’s a lack of political will.”