OP-ED -- Refusal to condemn US-Israeli illegal war on Iran shows the hypocrisy of Canada’s ‘rules-based’ PM

Mark Carney’s powerful words at Davos now ring hollow as he fails to stand up to the US and Israel after their illegal attack on Iran.

 

By Fareed Khan 

This has previously been published on Rabble.ca.
A version of this can be found on Substack.

In the final judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, the Allied powers delivered a verdict that still echoes as the bedrock of modern international law: “To initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

 

That supreme international crime is being committed right now, in real time, by the United States and Israel. On February 28, these two rogue powers launched an unprovoked, unjustified assault on the sovereign territory of Iran. As missiles and bombs rained down one of the targets hit on the first day was a girls’ primary school in Minab, slaughtering at least 165 innocent schoolgirls. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was also assassinated along with a number of senior leadership figures. Civilian infrastructure, including oil depots, have been pulverized, more than 1,300 have been killed so far and more than 17,000 have been injured. This was not an act of self-defence, but rather naked aggression—the exact crime the Nuremberg Tribunal branded as a supreme evil. 

 

The history of the current Iranian regime is not a pretty one. Yes, it has been brutal, it crushes protesters, oppresses women, jails and tortures dissidents. That deserves unequivocal condemnation. But Iran’s brutality at home does not grant a license to other nations to bomb a sovereign state into submission. The rule of law is not a buffet. You don’t get to pick and choose when it applies based on whose regime you dislike. 

 

Yet that is precisely what Mark Carney is doing. Canada’s prime minister has refused—point-blank—to call this aggression by its proper name. He has issued tepid calls for “restraint” while conspicuously refusing to condemn the two nations that started this inferno. He even expressed support for the strikes, framing them as necessary to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The reality, confirmed by anonymous US intelligence sources, the International Atomic Energy Association, and independent experts, is that Iran was nowhere near a functional nuclear weapon. No imminent threat existed. Diplomacy was progressing. Talks were constructive. Then came the missiles.  

 

Only weeks before the attack, Carney stood at the World Economic Forum in Davos and delivered a lofty speech about the need for “smaller nations” to band together to uphold international law, sovereignty, and the rules-based order. He spoke passionately about middle powers defending territorial integrity and rejecting the law of the jungle. So what was the point of that speech if he now endorses the very thing he criticized? Was it empty rhetoric designed to impress Davos elites while he quietly supported the very violations he claimed to oppose in January?  

 

If Canada truly believes in international law, why the cowardly silence when the world’s most powerful actors torch it? The question demands an answer. Is Carney only interested in upholding international law when it serves Canada and its allies? Or is he committed to the territorial sovereignty of all nations—ally and adversary alike?

 

Carney’s initial response to this new war screams selective enforcement. Canada was among the loudest voices condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a flagrant violation of the UN Charter. Sanctions were imposed amid speeches filled with outrage. “Rules-based order” became a mantra. Yet when the United States and Israel launch an illegal war of aggression against Iran—bombing civilian sites, assassinating leaders, and igniting a regional conflagration—Canada offers support “with regret” at best, and deflection at worst. No demands for accountability, just platitudes about diplomacy while the innocent die. 

 

International experts are calling out this grotesque double standard. UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul has stated bluntly that the US-Israeli strikes “appear to breach the UN Charter’s prohibition on aggression” and lack any valid legal justification.  

 

Yusra Suedi, assistant professor of international law at the University of Manchester, warns that the attacks amount to a crime of aggression and expose the “unravelling fragility” of international law—precisely the same fragility the West highlighted when Russia invaded Ukraine but now conveniently overlooks for its own allies.  

 

Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University said, “The use of wanton military force has contributed to a sense of impunity for powerful states and has degraded the international law system.”   

 

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect has documented the pattern—a swift, unified condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine contrasted with excuses, silence, or outright support for US-Israeli aggression against Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond.  

 

The greatest beneficiaries of Washington’s contempt for the UN Charter are the very actors the West claims to oppose—Russia, now emboldened in Ukraine, and China, watching for its moment in Taiwan. The message to the world is clear—international law is a weapon to be wielded against adversaries, never against ourselves. 

 

Instead of demonstrating principled leadership Carney has shown rank hypocrisy that shames Canada’s international reputation. Not surprising given his government’s refusal to recognize Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, despite the overwhelming evidence and the explicit findings of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Médecins Sans Frontières the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the UN and numerous other respected international organizations. 

 

Instead, Canada continues to ally itself with and politically shield nations committing the gravest of international crimes while Iran burns and its people suffer.By backing—or at minimum refusing to condemn—this war of aggression, Carney has aligned Canada with the very forces that he criticized in Davos, ones that ignore the rule of law, inflict chaos and suffering, while their victims are left to bury the corpses. We were supposed to have left that era behind after 1945. Yet here we are returning to the law of the jungle. 

 

The strikes were launched while negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program were reportedly advancing. The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran—negotiated under Barack Obama—was working until Trump tore it up at Netanyahu’s behest. Carney knows this, yet he calls for “restraint” now that the genie is out of the bottle. He condemns Iran’s retaliation but refuses to name the original aggressors. Why? 

 

Because consistency would require Canada to stand on principle against powerful allies. Because admitting the attack on Iran violates the UN Charter would expose the hypocrisy. Because Carney’s vaunted Davos vision is performative theatre not meant to apply to the crimes of allies. 

 

Canada cannot claim moral authority when our prime minister shrinks from stating the obvious—the US-Israeli assault on Iran is illegal, dangerous, and a direct breach of the UN Charter and the territorial sovereignty of a member state. Carney’s refusal to condemn it reveals exactly where his true commitments lie—to power and alliance above principle. 

 

The world is watching. Smaller nations—the very ones Carney claimed to champion in Davos—are taking notes. If Canada will not defend the rules when it matters most, against the most powerful violators, then Carney’s words were worthless. International law either applies to everyone or it applies to no one. The shame belongs to him—and to every Canadian who still believes their government stands for something more than selective hypocrisy. 

 

The path forward is anarchy unless leaders like Carney find the courage to speak truth to power—starting with naming the supreme crime for what it is. Until then, his Davos speech will stand as a monument to empty rhetoric and moral bankruptcy. 

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