Carney Expresses Regret Over Support for Strikes on Iran Amid Tensions
Melbourne: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday that he supports attacks on Iran “with some regret” because they represent an extreme example of the breakdown of world order.
Carney spoke at the Sydney-based international policy think tank Lowy Institute on the Australian leg of a trade-focused tri-nation visit that started in India. He will address the Australian Parliament on Thursday, then fly to Japan on Friday.
“Geostrategically, hegemons increasingly act without restraint or respect for international norms or laws, while others suffer the consequences. Now the extremes of this disruption are playing out in real time in the Middle East,” Carney said.
In his first statement since the war began on February 28, the Canadian prime minister emphasized that his country was not informed of the US-Israeli air strikes in advance.
“We were not informed in advance, we were not asked to participate,” Carney told reporters traveling with him in Australia. “At first glance, these actions appear to be contrary to international law.”
He said whether U.S. and Israeli airstrikes violated international law was “a decision for others to make.”
Carney said Canada supports efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and threatening international peace and security. There have been no relations between the two countries for 15 years due to human rights violations reported in Iran. Canada designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization last year.
“Instead of passively waiting for a world we want it to be, we actively engage with the world as it is. But we also take this position with some regret because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order,” he said.
Despite decades of U.N. efforts, “Iran’s nuclear threat remains, and now the United States and Israel are acting without recourse to the U.N. or consulting their allies, including Canada,” he added.
Carney built on themes he laid out in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January that garnered widespread attention. He argued that the world order was experiencing a rupture and the old norms of the rule-based order were beginning to be erased.
Canada and Australia aim to increase cooperation in the fields of critical minerals, artificial intelligence and defense technologies.
Carney said Canada and Australia are rich in critical minerals and are working together to create “the largest mineral reserves held by any credible democratic nation.”
