Early Saturday morning, the United States and Israel initiated a second round of aerial attacks against Iran following the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites of last June.
The justifications for this latest illegal military action by the Trump administration — which has killed Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — are as unconvincing as were those of the 2025 strikes, but now include a more explicit goal of regime change.
Iran’s ostensibly restarted nuclear weapons program — a rationale asserted by the Trump administration fraught, per The New York Times, with false and/or unproven claims — has been cited out as casus belli.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Foreign Minister Anita Anand were in India on a trade mission when the news of the assault on Iran broke. There is no indication that Ottawa or other allies were advised of the operation before it was launched.
The joint statement issued by the two on Saturday does not reflect well on the Prime Minister’s statesmanship. It is especially troublesome when contrasted with the views expressed by Mr. Carney in his justly lauded Davos speech.
The ironic backstory to these events is that it was Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had effectively constrained Iran’s nuclear activity and which was being complied with by Tehran when it was upended by Trump in his first administration.
The current and past attacks against Iran have only worsened the situation around Iran’s nuclear intentions and will further curtail the dwindling cooperation by Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its monitoring role.
An Iranian exit from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) may yet be a consequence of this latest military action given that being a party to the agreement and its associated nuclear safeguards arrangements with the IAEA has failed to protect Iran from assault.
The claim that military action was needed to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon looks even more threadbare given that this was the same program that Trump boasted was “obliterated” after the June bombing attacks.
An IAEA report leaked to the Associated Press on Friday said the agency has not been allowed access to the nuclear facilities bombed in June and therefore “cannot verify whether Iran has suspended all enrichment-related activities,” or the “size of Iran’s uranium stockpile at the affected nuclear facilities.” Of course it was the June 2025 bombing of nuclear sites which disrupted the IAEA’s ongoing monitoring of Iran’s nuclear material and caused the rupture of transparency.
As in June, the latest military assault occurred while diplomatic negotiations with Iran were underway, suggesting that for Washington the talks were just providing cover for the intended military strike. (Word to the wise: look to your defences before you agree to sit down with the the Trump administration at a negotiating table).
The new goal of regime change may be motivated in part by Trump’s pledge to Iranian civilians that “help was on its way” during the January protests. He managed to claim then that his intervention with Iranian authorities had halted the execution of protesters, notwithstanding the ongoing slaughter of Iranian citizens (Trump cited a figure of 32,000 dead in his State of the Union address).
The president is now calling upon the Iranian population to rise up against its rulers as if a bombing campaign alone could topple the regime and its capacity for brutal repression domestically. What are the US and Israel asking Iranian citizens to do – confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with frying pans and broom handles?
History demonstrates that strategic bombing campaigns on their own never result in regime change. This outcome would require an armed intervention on the ground. And that type of military commitment is not one that will be forthcoming on the part of either the United States or Israel.
Trump is attracted to one-off, quick and painless military operations (as in the Venezuela “snatch and grab” mission in January, or the single night bombing of Iran last June) and knows that any lengthy engagement in the Middle East could endanger his political standing.
The Carney-Anand statement, far from challenging a world order that reflects the Thucydides maxim that “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”, appears to be endorsing it.
The statement supports a military aggression that fails any test of international law and regurgitates Trump’s dubious claim that this assault was necessary to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
It further notes that Tehran never halted all its enrichment activities while ignoring the fact that as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT, Iran was entitled to enrich uranium under the supervision of the IAEA.
The statement attempts to make up for its weak case on the nuclear file by referring to Iran having “one of the world’s worst human rights records”. This may well be true, but if bad human rights records were enough to justify foreign invasion, there would be a lengthy queue of candidates for such treatment at each UN General Assembly.
By expressing support for the United States’ claim that it is preventing the Iranian regime “from further threatening international peace and security”, the Prime Minister is condoning a tactical distortion of reality.
Among the regimes currently threatening international peace and security are those in power in Washington and Jerusalem, and by eschewing international law to deal with other threats, they are implicitly removing themselves from the same guardrails.
Ottawa cannot avoid taking a position. But the more the prime minister tries to walk the tightrope of distancing Canada from Donald Trump geopolitically while acquiescing to his worst impulses, the less Canadians will trust his government’s conduct of our foreign policy.
This article was first published on the Policy blog on February 28, 2026.
