What do Canada and Iran have in common? The US bullies both

Ottawa and Tehran face different forms of pressure, but both reveal the same pattern of a declining hegemon lashing out as resistance grows Canada has very few similarities with Iran – to Canada’s own shame. Let’s leave aside the basic differences, such as location, demographics, weather, and cuisine, and focus on the essentials: Historically, Iran is old and firmly based on an ancient civilization; Canada, like the US, is young and a little accidental, a leftover of the British Empire in its settler-colonial-ethnic-cleansing variant. In terms of religion, Iran is shaped by pious Shia Islam; Canada displays the flaccid mix of an emasculated Christmas-and-jingle-bells-only Christianity and aggressive anything-goes consumerist secularism typical of the contemporary West. Geopolitically, Iran is a proud and victorious opponent of the US and Israel; Canada is a fairly ordinary vassal in the American empire. Accordingly, Canada is deeply and proudly involved in the West’s proxy war against Russia by way of using up Ukraine. Indeed, the Canadian contribution is particularly ironic because it also serves a frenetic and powerful nationalist Ukrainian lobby, rooted in deliberately privileged fascist World War Two runaways and Cold War conspirators. Iran, on the other side, has long helped Russia and, for its efforts, been directly attacked by Kiev’s Zelensky regime. In return, Western sources claim , Moscow has been helping Tehran with its ongoing defense against the US and Israel. Most importantly, Iran is a country on the side of elementary decency, fundamental human ethics, and international law and therefore against the genocide committed by Israel, the US, UK, Germany, and various other Western accomplices against the Palestinian nation. Canada – Israeli murders of Canadian citizens and some cheap and, in effect, empty gestures from Ottawa notwithstanding – has been, at the very best, yet another camp follower of the Western genocide coalition.

Read more Canada hits US with retaliatory tariffs And yet, strange as it may be, recent events have produced something that Iran and Canada have in common. Or to be precise, it’s Washington’s bizarre policies that have created this odd overlap: both Canada the long-standing vassal and Iran the steadfast antagonist are currently at the receiving end of both fresh attempts at coercion by economic warfare and escalating rhetoric from Washington. Of course, there are orders-of-magnitude differences between the Trump administration’s ‘ Operation Economic Outcast ’ against Tehran and the latest round of tariff and trash-talk launched against Canada. The ‘Operation’ targeting Iran, according to its mastermind and cheerleader Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, aims to combine a naval blockade, intelligence gathering, “mapp[ing] every node, every facilitator and every network that Iran” is using to trade abroad, and wide-ranging secondary sanctions to, in Bessent words, “ asphyxiat[e] ” Tehran. The declared end goal is to “collapse” Iran by inflicting an “Economic D-Day,” as President Donald Trump has put it. There’s no such intention to wage total economic war in the case of Canada. Regarding Ottawa, Washington has merely initiated a pressure campaign within its empire. Its goal is not absolute destruction but the punishment and coercion of a wayward vassal. In essence, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Mark Carney has rejected Washington’s offer of a crudely disadvantageous and interfering trade deal, featuring, according to the Financial Times, “ ludicrous ” American demands. Read more Iceland just friend-zoned the EU Faced with “ clodhopping bullying ” so extreme no leader could have submitted – except maybe, say, the EU’s Ursula von der Ley