Tehran targets Canadian 'spies'

The heated language used by the lawmakers is reminiscent of the rhetoric of militants during the 1979 hostage crisis, when revolutionary students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and relations with Washington reached a dangerous low.

Former Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor, who helped rescue six Americans from Iran during the crisis, called the charges "ludicrous," and dismissed them as "a lot of rhetoric."

"They are equating spying with getting to know your sources, which is good diplomacy," Taylor said from his home in New York, adding, "every embassy has people who can act as liaison officials with secret services. But Canada has no reason to run its own spy service in Iran, when other Western countries can do the job much better."

Observers say the Iranian parliament's action is part of a tit-for-tat that followed the murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi after she was jailed in Tehran in 2003 for taking pictures during a student protest. Since then, Ottawa has led a charge at the United Nations to censure Iran for its poor human rights record.

But, says Houchang Hassan-Yari, head of politics and economics at the Royal Military College of Canada, "parliament has limited power in Iran, and if the leadership doesn't take this on, it will not turn into a crisis."

Ottawa's Department of Foreign Affairs says there is "absolutely no basis" for the charges made by the Iranian parliament.

The Iranian embassy did not respond to calls yesterday.

Those who watch the two countries' foreign policies closely say it's one more downward step in the unhappy progress of Canadian-Iranian relations.

"It's not a crisis, but more of a symptom of things going downhill," said a Western diplomat who also worked in Iran. "Canada's stand on human rights and Iran's treatment of its citizens, like Zahra Kazemi, has angered people in authority. They want to retaliate."

Ottawa's diplomatic list says there is no ambassador currently in Tehran, and the mission is headed by a junior official, a chargé d'affaires.

Relations with Iran have cooled since they began in 1955, and a Canadian embassy was opened in Tehran six years later. But in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage rescue, normal relations were broken off. The embassy temporarily closed in 1980 and only reopened in 1988.

Now repercussions continue from the murder of Kazemi, and the more recent arrest of Canadian Iranian academic Ramin Jahanbegloo. Following a Canadian-led UN vote to reprimand Iran for its human rights violations, Tehran tabled a failed resolution condemning Canada's treatment of immigrants and indigenous people. Its officials also allege Ottawa is in league with Britain and the U.S., which is locked in a struggle over Iran's ambitions to develop a nuclear bomb.

"Canada is no big deal in global politics," sneered Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in a recent Tehran news conference. "We all know Canada is acting on behalf of other countries and only after full co-ordination with London."

The former Liberal government slapped restrictions on Canada's diplomatic relations with Iran, limiting contacts and halting visits or exchanges by Iranian officials to Canada. Little dialogue has taken place since then.

Meanwhile, says Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst based in Israel who is writing a book on hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "it is extremely unlikely that the Canadian embassy is going to be attacked, or even investigated."

If the Iranian government were "really angry," he said, its secret service VAVAK would already have looked for incriminating evidence to use against Canada.

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