{"id":3261,"date":"2026-05-06T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:34:00","slug":"ottawa-says-its-not-involved-in-the-iran-war-it-might-be-lying-the-walrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=3261","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa Says It\u2019s Not Involved in the Iran War. It Might Be Lying | The Walrus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div wp_automatic_readability=\"294.30472038485\">\n\t\t<!-- Ad-Auris --><br \/>\n\t\t<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; display: none;\" data-project-id=\"Lj4IfFjbkqIqQLpPHYHT\" allowfullscreen=\"false\" allowtransparency=\"\" allow=\"clipboard-read; clipboard-write\" frameborder=\"0\" id=\"ad-auris-iframe\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">S<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">ince the first American\u2013Israeli<\/span> air strikes on Iran in late February, Ottawa\u2019s message has been muddled at best. Prime Minister Mark Carney shifted from supporting the campaign to calling it likely \u201cinconsistent with international law\u201d to being unable to rule out Canadian involvement.<\/p>\n<div class=\"takeaways\">\n<h3>Key points<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Canada\u2019s military is deeply integrated into American command structures, raising questions about its involvement in Iran<\/li>\n<li>Canada supplies a range of military goods to US forces through the Canadian Commercial Corporation<\/li>\n<li>Previous US missions saw Canadian forces in active intelligence and combat roles despite messaging of non-involvement from Canadian officials<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>This equivocation points to a hard truth: for decades, the Canadian military has been embedded with its much stronger, well-funded brother to the south. This includes co-operation in the Middle East that effectively positioned our forces as a plug-and-play partner within United States\u2013led coalitions. From maritime surveillance and intelligence support during the Iran\u2013Iraq War in 1980 to major deployments in the 1990 Persian Gulf War under operations like Vagabond, Scimitar, and Friction, Canada has integrated its naval, air, and medical units into American command structures when needed. <\/p>\n<p>That integration deepened after the September 11 attacks, when Canada joined the war in Afghanistan. In Kandahar, we conducted counter-insurgency operations alongside American units. Even without formally joining the 2003 Iraq invasion, Canada is widely believed to have contributed through embedded personnel and naval deployments. More recently, under Operation Impact, we help train, advise, and assist Iraqi and regional forces to prevent an ISIS resurgence. There\u2019s also Operation Amarna, which, among other broader US and coalition objectives, provides diplomacy protection and supports missions in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p>Our country also has a long history with Iran\u2014a much tenser one. In the lead up to the revolution in 1979, Canadian officials in Tehran operated in an increasingly volatile environment, with military police attached to the embassy as conditions deteriorated. During the hostage crisis, Canada helped facilitate the escape of six US diplomats in 1980. <\/p>\n<p>From that point on, tensions stayed high. Flashpoints include the death of Iranian Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in Tehran police custody in 2003, which prompted tougher Canadian sanctions. In 2012, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada severed diplomatic ties, closed its embassy, and expelled Iranian diplomats. The rupture deepened in 2020 with the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 by Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing all 176 people on board, including fifty-five Canadians.  <\/p>\n<p>Taken together, these episodes might help explain the careful distance Ottawa is now trying to maintain. Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand and Minister of National Defence David McGuinty repeatedly stressed that Canada is not involved in the newest war, was not consulted by the US, and has no plans to take part in offensive operations. <\/p>\n<p>A CBC report published March 1 said the opposite. According to a former senior Canadian general, it\u2019s \u201chighly likely\u201d Canadian Armed Forces personnel on exchange with the US military would have been involved on some level in the planning and coordination of air strikes on Iran (a possibility the Department of National Defence later denied in an update to the story).<\/p>\n<p>Approximately eighteen CAF members are on exchange with Operation Foundation, which embeds Canadian personnel within United States Central Command headquarters\u2014or CENTCOM\u2014across Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Given that CENTCOM is the regional hub responsible for Operation Epic Fury, connecting the dots between CAF officers and their potential direct involvement in the Iran war would seem logical. <\/p>\n<p>But getting straight answers on what our soldiers are doing is another matter entirely.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">he opening air strikes<\/span> of the Iran war killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and several other high-value targets. Iranian leadership under Mojtaba Khamenei, the late supreme leader\u2019s son, responded by retaliating with strikes on Israel, US bases, allied assets, and partner nations across the Gulf, by choking off trade in the Strait of Hormuz, and by destroying vast reserves of liquefied natural gas, refineries, and other crucial energy infrastructure.  <\/p>\n<p>Reciprocal escalations and political sparring led to US president Donald Trump threatening to wipe out a \u201cwhole civilization,\u201d before backing off and agreeing to a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, an agreement which hinged on Iran reopening the strait. The ceasefire held on paper, but attacks by Israel on Lebanon continued, alongside sporadic strikes by Iran. High-level talks in Islamabad between the US and Iran ended without resolution, each side blaming the other. Trump then began posting on Truth Social, floating threats of a US Navy blockade on the strait\u2014threats which materialized and remain in place.<\/p>\n<p>Amid the crisis, Canada\u2019s military role in the region has become harder and harder to parse. The Department of National Defence told the CBC that CAF members serving on exchange with US forces in the Middle East remain in their posts but have been assigned \u201cother duties\u201d outside of the Iran campaign. No further explanation was provided. There is little publicly available on what kinds of jobs are part of the exchange program. CENTCOM won\u2019t speak on behalf of other countries, confirm details, or answer questions.<\/p>\n<p>In March, Lieutenant General Steve Boivin, commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command, told reporters there are about 200 armed forces members deployed to the Middle East on six operations; some of those have been rotated home or to different tasks. This past June, the DND confirmed that \u201cup to five CAF members operate from Al Udeid airbase in Qatar.\u201d But due to \u201coperational security imperatives,\u201d no further details have been provided.<\/p>\n<p>Hints can be gleaned from other sources. A February LinkedIn post from Rear Admiral Kristjan Monaghan, Canada\u2019s defence attach\u00e9 to the US and commander of the Canadian Defence Liaison Staff, states that more than 750 CAF members serve across America as part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and in \u201cexchange roles\u201d internationally. \u201cThey plan with, fly with, sail with, and operate alongside their American counterparts in support of continental defence and Canada\u2019s security interests,\u201d the post says.<\/p>\n<p>Monaghan\u2019s words echo in a March 3 <em>Toronto Star<\/em> opinion piece by Lloyd Axworthy, Canadian foreign minister from 1996 to 2000. \u201cCanadian officers sit inside American headquarters that plan and execute wars. Our ships, planes, and sensors feed systems that find, track, and fix targets,\u201d Axworthy wrote. \u201cOn paper we are \u2018supporting,\u2019 \u2018monitoring,\u2019 \u2018co-operating.\u2019 In practice, we are part of the machinery of force.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, that war machine runs on Canadian contributions. According to reporting in <em>The Maple<\/em>, Canada supplies a range of military goods brokered by a little-known Crown agency called the Canadian Commercial Corporation. These goods include surveillance and targeting sensors, artillery propellants, F-35 fighter jet components, and explosives. Canadian firms also provide parts for armoured vehicles and naval systems. Much of this material has been re-exported to allies, such as Israel, embedding Canadian-made components across multiple layers of US military activity.<\/p>\n<p>The exports are not just weaponry. They include personnel. The Walrus confirmed that one CENTCOM role is being filled by an intelligence liaison officer tied to the Canadian Joint Operations Command. According to the DND, the officer\u2019s main duty is \u201cto facilitate effective communication, coordination, and mutual understanding with the timely exchange of relevant information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, is it believable for Ottawa to suggest it was caught off guard when the first strikes fell? The DND\u2019s comment, to The Walrus, that \u201chost nations\u201d often shield foreign military personnel on exchange from their operations rings hollow when open-source tracking of the massive American mobilization was front and centre on social media in the lead up to the war.  <\/p>\n<p>This wouldn\u2019t be the first time Canada\u2019s official position diverged from its operational footprint. Approximately 100 CAF members were embedded with US, British, and Australian military units during the invasion and war in Iraq in 2003, despite then prime minister Jean Chr\u00e9tien publicly stating Canada would not take part without a United Nations Security Council resolution.<\/p>\n<p>A classified US diplomatic cable released years later from WikiLeaks showed that on the same day Chr\u00e9tien publicly refused to join the war, then foreign affairs official James Wright met with an American diplomat. According to the CBC, Wright \u201cemphasized\u201d that \u201ccontrary to statements by the prime minister, Canadian naval and air forces could be \u2018discreetly\u2019 put to use during the pending US-led assault on Iraq and its aftermath.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chr\u00e9tien would go on to say \u201cunfortunately, a lot of people thought sometimes that we were the fifty-first state of America. It was clear that day that we were not.\u201d It turns out, however, that our contribution exceeded many coalition members. Retired general Walter Natynczyk served as a brigadier general in Baghdad and was in charge of 35,000 coalition troops composed of American, British, and Australian soldiers that helped plan the invasion. Natynczyk was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross in 2005 for his leadership in Iraq. One study estimated roughly 500,000 deaths from the war and occupation between 2003 and 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Natynczyk, who had been deputy commanding general of the US Army\u2019s 3rd Corps in Fort Hood, Texas, said in an interview that the Canadian government had approved his deployment. Retired lieutenant general Peter Devlin also served. Documents from 2008 reveal that, in the run-up to the invasion, two dozen CAF members worked in the plans division of CENTCOM and thirty-five under US command in exchange roles participated in the 2003 ground campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Chr\u00e9tien\u2019s assertion that Canadian soldiers were not directly involved in the fighting was refuted by a British Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt, who told CBC News at the time that Canadians were on the front lines. \u201cThey are in combat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span><span class=\"smallcaps\">n the morning<\/span> of March 1, 2026, an Iranian air strike hit Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait in the operational support hub the CAF has maintained for more than a decade, known as \u201cCamp Canada.\u201d We know this because <em>La Presse<\/em> reported it a week after it occurred. Journalists had to rely on satellite imagery, their own open-source investigation, and expert analysis to build a picture of the likely sequence of events.<\/p>\n<p>Questions to the prime minister and minister of national defence on why Canadians weren\u2019t informed in a timely manner saw Carney respond that he \u201cwas not the only spokesperson for the government,\u201d and McGuinty flip-flop on whether he knew or didn\u2019t know of the attack before it was published by <em>La Presse<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>These non-committal replies are another chapter in Ottawa\u2019s aspirations to preserve ties to the US while distancing itself from the repercussions of its foreign policy. A similar dynamic was uncovered over CAF personnel, tech, and assets implicated in America\u2019s lethal Operation Southern Spear, which has killed more than 180 people in air strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific waters.<\/p>\n<p>Ottawa\u2019s playbook of delaying, denying, deflecting, and refusing to answer even the most basic questions due to \u201coperational security\u201d falls flat when even a cursory glance at British, Australian, and Ukrainian media channels sees them giving routine updates on their deployed forces with no issue. <\/p>\n<p>The Liberal government has continued to shrug off opaque military developments. Troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u2019s mission in Iraq quietly relocated to Europe. A recent missile strike near the Israel\u2013Lebanon border hit a UN post hosting CAF personnel under Operation Jade, Canada\u2019s contribution to United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Days later, an Iranian air strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia injured several US soldiers: a near miss for Canadian personnel embedded with the air force\u2014personnel that, it turns out, were never deployed to the Gulf at all, a fact uncovered only after direct questioning by the Canadian Press. <\/p>\n<p>What emerges is a pattern. At a moment of escalating regional risk, the public record of Canada\u2019s military role remains fragmentary, assembled less through official disclosure than through persistent reporting pushing past institutional silence.<\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 1 --><\/p>\n<section id=\"sexy_author_bio_widget-2\" class=\"widget widget_sexy_author_bio_widget\">\n<div id=\"sexy-author-bio\" style=\"\" class=\"christy-somos\" wp_automatic_readability=\"4\">\n<div id=\"sab-gravatar\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Christy Somos\" src=\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ba042eb8f29c7504a49deb339b4a124?s=70&amp;d=mm&amp;r=pg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ba042eb8f29c7504a49deb339b4a124?s=140&amp;d=mm&amp;r=pg 2x\" class=\"avatar avatar-70 photo lazy\" height=\"70\" width=\"70\" decoding=\"async\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p><script>\n!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\nif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\nn.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\ns.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script',\n'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n fbq('init', '1090834961073306'); \nfbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since the first American\u2013Israeli air strikes on Iran in late February, Ottawa\u2019s message has been muddled at best. Prime Minister Mark Carney shifted from supporting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ba042eb8f29c7504a49deb339b4a124?s=70&d=mm&r=pg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}