In the wake of the U.S-Israel joint military venture in Iran that erupted abruptly last weekend — and, more specifically, the initial response from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who, in a statement co-signed by his foreign affairs minister issued while both were in India as part of a high-stakes tricontinental trade tour, stated that Canada “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security” — The Maple’s Davide Mastracci takes a trip down Canadian media memory lane to highlight “at least a quarter century” of still-unproven claims on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“For decades, Canadian politicians and media outlets have pointed to alleged nuclear development in Iran to call for military action and/or sanctions against its population,” he notes.

“The threat of Iranian nukes has never materialized; the military strikes and sanctions have, killing thousands in the country directly and contributing to the impoverishment of millions of others.”

In fact, after going through “25 years of media commentary on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons,” he “has found a consistent pattern of writers and editorial boards claiming Iran is mere weeks, months or years away from obtaining them,” he notes.

“These claims have not aged well, and yet, the media class persists with the fearmongering.”

To illustrate that claim, he includes a sample citation from every year between 2001 and 2026, starting with then-National Post writer Alexander Rose’s prediction that “sometime in the next few years, ceteris paribus, either Iran or Iraq is going to gatecrash the Nuclear Club,” and continuing up to a hot-off-the-presses Globe and Mail editorial from earlier this week that argues Iran “cannot fund international terror, attack Israel for decades through proxies, pursue nuclear weapons and back a war of aggression in Ukraine and then expect that the niceties of international law will somehow shield it from the consequences of its action.”

Elsewhere on the site, Emma Paling and Nur Dogan teamed up to cover an “anti-war demonstration” in downtown Toronto over the weekend, and chatted with “Iranian-Canadians (who) spoke out against the American-Israeli bombing campaign against their home country, and their fellow Iranians who support it.”

Several demonstrators “also took issue with the views of another group of Iranian-Canadians who celebrated the bombings at a large gathering in Richmond Hill, Ont.,” with one suggesting the group “had ‘literally rewritten history in their own heads,’ forgetting the impact of American sanctions on the current conditions inside Iran,” the story notes.

“The Iranian-Canadians interviewed by The Maple also took issue with(Carney’s) support for the bombing campaign, which he characterized as being intended to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Also keeping an eye on the reaction from Iranian Canadians: The Breach podcast host Desmond Cole, who chatted with former Breach editor Donya Ziaee, who is currently handling communications for New Democrat leadership hopeful Avi Lewis, and Samira Mohyeddin about “the history of struggle against authoritarianism in Iran, and why what Iranians need is international solidarity, not a right-wing monarchist revival on the heels of violent western intervention.”

Over at Canadian Dimension, Toronto-based writer Jasmine Ramze Rezaee contends that the statement from Carney, “for all practical purposes, signals alignment with Washington.”

In fact, “by framing Iran as the primary threat to regional peace — while sidestepping Israel’s central role in the escalation — Ottawa reinforces the same alliances and geopolitical logic that have shaped Western engagement in the Middle East for decades,” she notes. “So much for the independent ‘middle power’ posturing at Davos.”

For his part, Press Progress editor Luke LeBrun flagged a weekend X post from Ben Mulroney, who is currently hosting Global News’ flagship weekend politics show, The West Block, that amplified a video clip allegedly showing footage of a U.S. airstrike that was actually taken from a video game.

“As the United States and Israel carried out joint military strikes on Iran this weekend and decapitated the country’s political leadership through targeted killings, (Mulroney) struggled to separate fact from fiction in the online fog of war,” he notes.

The clip shared by Mulroney “shows a fighter jet performing highly sophisticated aerial maneuvers before striking what appears to be a civilian area surrounded by residential apartment blocks,” was originally posted by an  X user “who identifies herself as a ‘MAGA’ Trump supporter and a podcaster, (who) had herself reposted the clip from a Chinese-language X account that claimed it was footage of American F-15s bombing targets inside Iran,” LeBrun explains.

“PressProgress independently traced the video clip Mulroney reposted during the US-Israeli military strikes to an identical video posted on YouTube in December 2024 by a South Korean gaming channel called Battle Dragon, which regularly uploads clips from Arma 3,” a military simulation game.

“While misinformation is accelerating faster than ever thanks to AI-generated images and malign foreign actors, the public might have trusted that the host of Global News’ political affairs show would only share information that had first been verified by Global’s newsroom,” he argues.

“Neither Corus Entertainment, the parent company of Global News, nor Mulroney himself responded to multiple requests for comment about whether The West Block host sharing video game footage in the middle of a war is in alignment with Global News’ journalistic standards. The debunked video continues to remain visible on Mulroney’s X page more than 24 hours after PressProgress first contacted the media outlet and its host.”

Although it’s not framed as a direct response to Canada’s position on the escalating hostilities in the Middle East, Rabble contributors Daniel Drache and Marc Froese — who, as their joint bio notes,  are also the co-authors of Has Populism Won? The War On Liberal Democracy — weigh in on what they describe as a “Canadian doctrine for the end of the American century,” which would offer an alternative to the one seemingly being put into action by the current occupant of the White House.

“Unlike American presidents, Canadian prime ministers don’t often frame their policy pivots as doctrines, as if their ideas move the world,” the double-bylined piece acknowledges.

“Even so, Mark Carney’s now-famous ‘rupture speech’ at Davos did just that. Carney’s rejection of great power revanchism and call for greater cooperation among the world’s remaining democracies is a manifesto for renewing 21^st century liberalism.   But it’s also a statement to temper expectations. As such, the Carney Doctrine is distinctly Canadian in its outlook and orientation. It is optimistic and noncompliant, realistic and defiant. Carney offers the first positive course correction to guide Canada through the end of the American Century.”

Shifting back to the domestic front, Rabble writer Bridget Potasky takes a closer look at how the increasingly frequent invocation of the notwithstanding clause to bypass the traditional process of resolving labour disputes “poses (a) threat to labour rights.”

Rounding out the progressive-left circuit, Rabble contributor Ashleigh-Rae Thomas explains how sex workers are “at the forefront of the erosion of online privacy” as they contend with “legislation that claims to protect them,” but “is actually taking away their anonymity and privacy leading them into more precarious work environments.”

Trending on the right-of-centre side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• Rebel News reporter Alexandra Lavoie filed a dispatch from outside the Israeli consulate in Montreal, where “Pro-Hamas supporters showed up to express their support for the sadistic mullah regime in Iran” as “a smaller group of anti-regime demonstrators also gathered to confront them and voice their support for President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
• Rebel Mission Specialist David Menzies shares the details of “another roiling scandal at the Toronto Police Service … playing out behind the scenes and behind closed doors,” courtesy of a “police insider” who claims “numerous officers as well as civilian employees are frequently going on travel junkets the world over, from Las Vegas, Nevada and Bogota, Colombia, all the way across the globe to Melbourne, Australia, and they’re doing it on the taxpayer dime.”
• Post Millennial contributors Beth Baisch and Thomas Stevenson highlight a weekend rally in which “over 100,000 took to the streets in Toronto to celebrate(as) the US and Israel launched strikes against the Iranian regime.”
• Former Conservative leadership contender Peter MacKay chats with Juno News host Marc Patrone about how “Ottawa’s calls for a ceasefire in Iran could frustrate Washington ahead of trade talks and undermine ongoing US-Israeli strikes.”