GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau talks out of both sides of his mouth on Iran

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The Trudeau authorities is sucking and blowing on the similar time by publicly calling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the thugs now terrorizing the courageous ladies of Iran — a terrorist group, whereas refusing to declare this underneath Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act.
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On Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, accompanied by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a media convention, declared that within the authorities’s view: “The IRGC management are terrorists. The IRGC is a terrorist group. Right now, Canada is formally recognizing that – and appearing accordingly.”
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However Canada hasn’t formally acknowledged that and apparently has no plans to take action.
That will imply declaring the IRGC a “listed entity” underneath the Anti-Terrorism Act, together with it amongst teams the Trudeau authorities has deemed are terrorist organizations, such because the Proud Boys.
Whereas Trudeau and Freeland introduced additional sanctions in opposition to Iran on Friday, the PM’s continued refusal to checklist the IRGC as a terrorist group is totally weird.
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Maybe it has one thing to do with Trudeau not desirous to admit he was naive when he campaigned within the 2015 federal election to revive diplomatic relations with Iran, after former Conservative PM Stephen Harper severed ties in 2012 and listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Drive as a terrorist entity.
The Qods Drive is the exterior department of the IRGC.
It exports Iran’s state-sponsored terrorism to different international locations, offering arms, funding and paramilitary coaching to terrorist teams resembling Hamas, Lebanese Hizballah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Common Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine-Common Command and the Taliban.
The Trudeau authorities is refusing to checklist the inner department of the IRGC, which operates inside Iran terrorizing its personal inhabitants, as a terrorist entity.
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This regardless of the actual fact the IRGC is on the forefront of suppressing ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Iran, presiding over a propaganda marketing campaign to discredit them as “a conspiracy of the enemy” and launching drone and artillery assaults on what it says are bases of Kurdish separatists.
Trudeau’s stand is hypocritical on condition that for the previous week he has accused Conservative Chief Pierre Poilievre of misogyny due to a hidden tag in his YouTube movies referencing an anti-woman group, that Poilievre stated he eliminated as quickly as he turned conscious of it in a report by International Information.
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Poilievre final week attended and spoke to an enormous rally in Richmond Hill, the place police estimated the group at 50,000, supporting protests by Iranian ladies in Iran, demanding freedom after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died within the custody of Iran’s morality police, referred to as the Steerage Patrol.
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She was arrested for not carrying her hijab correctly underneath Iranian regulation requiring ladies to cowl their heads in public.
Trudeau, the self-described “feminist,” was nowhere to be discovered.
His refusal to designate the IRGC as a listed terrorist entity is much more weird on condition that in 2018, Liberal and opposition MPs voted in favour of a decision to declare the IRGC’s home safety drive a terrorist group.
The Trudeau authorities additionally holds the IRGC’s Aerospace Drive chargeable for taking pictures down Ukrainian Worldwide Airways Flight PS752 in January 2020, killing all 176 individuals on board, together with 55 Canadian residents, 30 everlasting residents and greater than 100 in all with important ties to Canada.
Final 12 months, Ontario Superior Justice Edward Belobaba dominated in civil proceedings arising from the IRGC’s downing of the civilian airliner with two surface-to-air missiles that it was a terrorist assault.
lgoldstein@postmedia.com