Vivian Bercovici: Iran could fall any day, and Carney could not be more irrelevant

National Post

19-06-2025

On Feb. 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, stood at the top of the stairs of an Air France jet that had just landed in Tehran. This stern, robed man had been whisked from his country villa provided by the French government (then led by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing) to a waiting jet. During his 14 years in exile, Ayatollah Khomeini was treated reverentially by the French. Before descending the stairs, the 40 year old cleric paused, triumphantly.
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Eleven days later, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left Iran in disgrace, marking the end of 54 years of his family's dynastic rule. He died not long after, in exile.
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I remember the moment the Islamic student militants stormed the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. It was unthinkable. Sixty-six American diplomatic staff and other embassy personnel were taken hostage and held for 444 days. The footage of them being led, helpless and blindfolded, through the embassy compound is still so fresh. The 'students' were enraged that the United States had admitted the Shah for cancer treatment.
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The fanatical supporters of the Islamic regime were veiled, bearded and unsmiling. They spent months painstakingly piecing together strips of documents that had been shredded in the final, panicked moments before the embassy was stormed. It was all so dramatic, dark and ominous. They were also masters at media manipulation.
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The gravity of the moment was not lost on anyone. But, almost 50 years on, many world leaders seem oblivious to the import of what is going down in Iran today. Some, of course, were barely in grade school in 1979. The intensity of the seismic shift — when Islamism was empowered — is not seared in their historical memory.
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In recent days, small minds huddled in Kananaskis country, just north of Calgary for a G7 summit. They were embarrassingly unconcerned with events unfolding in Iran and were much more excited by the self-aggrandizing diplomatic statements they churned out lionizing their brilliant accomplishments. Meanwhile, an emerging new world order rendered their theatrics irrelevant. The disconnect was total.
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Since 3 am local time, Friday June 13, an indescribably brilliant Israeli assault on key strategic and military sites throughout Iran has made the collapse of this repressive, theofascist dictatorship suddenly become very possible.
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Intelligence assessments confirming that Iran was possibly moments away from nuclear breakout created the urgency. U.S. President Donald Trump had been persistent for months in urging Iranian leadership to negotiate a deal which would require that they abandon all military nuclear ambitions. Iran refused. Israel attacked.