MELBOURNE, Australia — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he supported the strikes on Iran “with some regret,” calling them an extreme example of a rupturing world order.
Speaking at the Lowy Institute in Sydney during the Australian leg of a trade-focused, three-nation visit that began in India, Carney said he would address the Australian Parliament on Thursday before traveling to Japan. He warned that geostrategic hegemons are increasingly acting without constraint or respect for international norms, with others bearing the consequences. “Now the extremes of this disruption are being played out in real time in the Middle East,” he said.
Carney stressed Canada was not informed ahead of the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes and was not asked to participate. “We were not informed in advance, we were not asked to participate,” he told reporters traveling with him. He said, prima facie, the actions appear inconsistent with international law, though whether they broke the law is “a judgment for others to make.”
He reiterated Canada’s support for efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon or threatening international peace and security. Canada has had no formal relations with Iran for 15 years over reported human rights abuses and last year designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity.
“We are actively taking on the world as it is, not passively waiting for a world we wish to be. But we also take this position with some regret because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order,” Carney said. He noted that despite decades of U.N. efforts, Iran’s nuclear threat remains, and that the United States and Israel acted without engaging the U.N. or consulting allies including Canada.
Carney expanded on themes from a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued the rules-based world order is undergoing a rupture. He also highlighted Canada and Australia’s aims to deepen cooperation on critical minerals, artificial intelligence and defense technologies, noting the two countries have worked together to build “the largest mineral reserve held by trusted democratic nations.”