If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau truly wants to help the brave women of Iran protesting the country’s theocratic dictatorship, Canada should declare the country’s internal religious security force that is brutalizing them a terrorist organization.
Naming the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization is long overdue.
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Iran itself is a sponsor of global terrorism.
The Conservative government of Stephen Harper severed relations with it in 2012 and declared the IRGC’s foreign security division, known as the Quds Force, a terrorist organization that year.
In 2018, Liberal and opposition MPs voted in a non-binding resolution to declare the IRGC’s domestic security force a terrorist organization as well.
Canada holds the IRGC’s Aerospace Force responsible for shooting down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 in January 2020, killing all 176 people on board, including 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents and more than 100 in all with significant ties to Canada.
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Last year, Ontario Superior Justice Edward Belobaba ruled in civil proceedings arising from the IRGC downing of the civilian airliner with two surface-to-air missiles that it was a terrorist attack, despite denials by the Iranian government.
The IRGC is at the forefront of suppressing ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Iran, presiding over a propaganda campaign to discredit them as “a conspiracy of the enemy” and launching drone and artillery attacks on what it says are bases of Kurdish separatists.
This after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police, known as the Guidance Patrol, earlier this month.
Human rights activists say she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, which set off a wave of protests against the Iranian government, in which female demonstrators have defiantly removed their head coverings in public, illegal under Iranian law.
The protests are also fueled by widespread anger against the Iranian regime’s handling of the economy, which is experiencing high unemployment and inflation, in part because of global economic sanctions against the regime.
Trudeau says as part of Canada’s escalating economic campaign against Iran, his government will impose further sanctions, including some specifically targeting members of Iran’s morality police, to support the protesters.
But if Trudeau really wants to support them, then declare all of the IRGC a terrorist organization.
