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<\/p>\n\u201cWe should be concerned,\u201d said Thomas Juneau, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa\u2019s school of public and international affairs.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
He pointed to a pattern of \u201ctransnational repression \u2014 targeting of Iranian-Canadian dissidents, human rights or democratic activists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now in an existential fight, the regime may well pull out all the cyber-stops.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iranian state is now facing a fight to the finish, to its elimination effectively. They have in their minds absolutely nothing to lose,\u201d Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation, said in comments before Khamenei\u2019s death was confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iranian state could utilize its contacts with organized criminal groups \u2026 to target the Iranian diaspora, to intimidate and even try to kill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran and affiliated groups have carried out numerous campaigns against far-flung foes.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the House of Commons condemned an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler.<\/p>\n
Iranian hackers breached industrial equipment at Pennsylvania water facilities in 2023 and a New York dam in 2013. Between 2012 and 2013, Iran targeted dozens of U.S. financial institutions to disrupt online banking. More recently, state-aligned cyberwarfare groups have monitored and harassed dissidents in Canada, the U.S., U.K., Germany and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurvival at home includes countering anti-regime activism abroad. They won\u2019t disentangle these two things,\u201d said Juneau.<\/p>\n
Israel, which took part in Saturday\u2019s airstrikes, for decades has pointed to the Iranian regime as the main source of threats to its security, and the Carney government has echoed the view that militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi rebels all threaten Israel with Iranian support.<\/p>\n
Leaders of several western countries condemned the Iranian regime on Saturday while offering less full-throated support for the U.S.-Israeli attack. French President Emmanuel Macron called the situation \u201cdangerous\u201d and warned of \u201cgrave consequences\u201d for global security.<\/p>\n
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres went further, condemning the use of force as well as Iran\u2019s retaliation. He warned that they \u201cundermine international peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney has ruled out any Canadian military involvement in the attacks, despite rhetorical backing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat surprises me the most about Carney\u2019s statement is the fact that he did take this rather definitive stance in support of a military action whose objectives seem fluid and uncertain, and whose consequences could be grave,\u201d said Stephanie Carvin, who teaches international relations and security issues at Carleton University.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to support the Iranian regime to see the risks and danger of this particular action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carvin added that Canada\u2019s position on any issue sensitive to the U.S. has to keep the ongoing negotiations around free trade in mind, for fear of poking the bear.<\/p>\n
The task of dislodging a regime largely through airstrikes remains a major hurdle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s impossible, but without boots on the ground \u2014 and that\u2019s not what the United States wants to do \u2014 it would not be easy,\u201d said Maral Karimi, author of \u201cThe Iranian Green Movement of 2009\u201d and a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n
For others, that instability kindles a brighter flame than the dark certainty of a theocratic dictatorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that uncertainty, there\u2019s also hope. That uncertainty provides the possibility of Iranians actually controlling their own destiny for once,\u201d said Kaveh Shahrooz, a senior fellow a the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opposite of uncertainty in this case would have been continued brutality, a system that is committed to gender and religious apartheid, that has no respect for international law and that has supported for decades terrorism around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, the federal government listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps \u2014 a \u201cpraetorian guard\u201d military force that swears fealty to the ayatollah \u2014 as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s attack carries implications in areas ranging from international security to oil prices and trade flows. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down amid the fighting, blocking the corridor for a fifth of the world\u2019s oil shipments, according to transport companies and Iran\u2019s Tasnim news agency.<\/p>\n
A key question now is how long the conflict will last, and how far beyond Iran it will spread, as the U.S. and Israel look to corral the strife set off by their reversal from decades of sanctions, containment, periodic surgical strikes and proxy wars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen that regime change in the last 30 years doesn\u2019t really work very well. Whether we\u2019ve tried it in Afghanistan or in Iraq, it doesn\u2019t quite develop the way perhaps people had envisaged,\u201d said Gohel.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 28, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u2014 With files from Dylan Robertson in Ottawa<\/p>\n
Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe should be concerned,\u201d said Thomas Juneau, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa\u2019s school of public and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-506539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}