With crash probe, Canada paying for past decisions
OTTAWA— Canada’s federal transportation safety agency has accepted an invitation from Iran to send officials to the site of a plane crash in Tehran that killed 63 Canadians. But the extent to which it will be able to investigate the crash remains unclear, as Canadian consular officials scramble to obtain visas to enter Iran because Ottawa eight years ago severed diplomatic ties with the country.
In a statement Thursday evening, the Transportation Safety Board said it will make arrangements for officials to travel to Iran and access the site where the plane crashed this week.
However, the decision to sever ties with Tehran, made by the Harper Conservatives to trumpet disgust with the Islamic theocracy and upheld by the Trudeau Liberals, makes that process more difficult. Without an official relationship, Canada must rely on Italy to secure applications and co-ordinate diplomacy with Tehran, while Canadians in Iran who need Ottawa’s services must apply through the Canadian Embassy in neighbouring Turkey.
Experts say the pragmatic consequences of the decision to dismantle relations with Iran are now coming into sharp relief.
“It would be so much easier to co-ordinate aid to the investigation and whatever other assistance is needed … if we had a mission there,” said Jon Lindsay, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Roland Paris, a professor at the University of Ottawa and a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau, said it was “shortsighted” for the government to have cut ties with Iran. Having diplomatic relations permits quicker communication between governments to deal with consular issues, help citizens, gather intelligence and more, he said.
“Having diplomatic relations is in no way an endorsement of the country, which is why most countries in the world, even those that are unfriendly to Iran, continue to maintain embassies there,” Paris said.
In his second sombre news conference over the past two days, Trudeau again called on Iran to allow Canada to take part in a “thorough” investigation of the crash, as Canadian officials now believe the plane was “likely” shot down by an Iranian missile, possibly by accident, hours after the country launched rockets at U.S. military bases in Iraq.
Trudeau recognized Canada’s troubled history with Iran, but argued both countries have an interest in working to conclude what happened, given that many Canadians and Iranians died together in the plane crash.
“There were many reasons why Canada has significant issues with Iran, and has for a number of years, but in this situation, it is clear that we are coming together in the wake of a terrible tragedy that has befallen Canadians. It has befallen many Iranian citizens as well,” Trudeau said.
“One can’t forget that the majority of victims on that airline were Iranian citizens and this is something that binds us together in our grief and, I think, the desire for answers from families who lost loved ones is fairly universal.”
Speaking to reporters in Montreal, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he spoke to his Iranian counterpart Wednesday night — before he received intelligence about the missile strike — and urged him to let Canadian consular staff into the country and for Canadian safety inspectors to help with the crash investigation.
He said Canadian officials need to obtain visas as “step one” of a process that would hopefully lead to Canadian participation in a comprehensive investigation with other international partners.
“The response … was open, was encouraging,” Champagne said, even if there has been no final assurance that visas and investigation access will be granted.
“I cannot think of something more serious that the world would want to investigate,” he added.
Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran in September 2012, when Stephen Harper’s Conservative party was in power. It justified the decision in light of Iran’s threats to Israel, human rights violations, concerns about its nuclear enrichment program and assistance to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. John Baird, then Harper’s foreign affairs minister, called Iran “the most significant threat to global peace and security today.”
In 2015, Trudeau promised to re-establish relations with Iran, but his government abandoned that effort three years later, when Liberal MPs voted with the Conservative opposition to halt efforts to restore diplomatic ties.
David Welch, an international relations professor at the University of Waterloo, said the decision to cut diplomatic ties can be a “clear statement” of principle to the world, even if it is unpopular with the “professional diplomatic corps in Ottawa.”
And yet while Welch said Canadian participation in the crash investigation would probably be “a matter of course” if Canada had a diplomatic mission in Iran, the decision to cut ties might not prevent that from happening.
“I don’t think they’re particularly hostile to Canada at the moment,” he said, pointing to how Canada has called for deescalation in the wake of the U.S. assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian leader, and supported the nuclear treaty that lifted sanctions on the country in exchange for limits on its uranium enrichment.
But as Canada continues to push for involvement, the question of re-establishing diplomatic ties — or whether Ottawa was right to cut them in the first place — is overshadowed by the urgent situation of tensions and tragedy in the region, said Paris.
“We don’t have relations with them. That’s the situation we’re in, that’s the hand we have to play,” he said. “We don’t have a chance to change that hand right now.”