Five Positions in Four Weeks. Carney’s Iran Policy Is Whatever He Said Last.

On March 1, 2026 — the day after the United States and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on Iran — Prime Minister Mark Carney released a statement. It was unambiguous. Iran, he said, is “the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East.” Canada supports the United States “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” No caveats. No conditions. Full support.¹

Three days later, in Sydney, Australia, Carney changed his position. He told the Lowy Institute he supported the strikes “with some regret” because they represented “an extreme example of a rupturing world order.” He added a phrase absent from his original statement: the strikes appeared to be “inconsistent with international law.” Whether they actually violated international law, he said, was “a judgment for others to make.”²

The next day, in Canberra, a reporter asked whether Canada would join the war. Carney did not say no. “One can never categorically rule out participation,” he said. “We will stand by our allies.”³

Four days after that, on March 9, Defence Minister David McGuinty said Canada “will not be participating” in the war.

Then, on March 19, Carney endorsed an allied statement expressing willingness to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. McGuinty said the same day that Canada is “considering” helping Iran’s neighbours defend themselves if they seek NATO assistance. On March 20, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s office issued a statement outlining criteria for potential Canadian support — while insisting the government’s position has been “consistent.”⁴

Five positions. Four weeks. The government insists nothing has changed.

The contradictions run deeper than the Prime Minister’s own statements. Before the strikes began, Anand’s parliamentary secretary Rob Oliphant was recorded at a town hall telling constituents the Canadian position on a potential American strike. “We do not support an American strike,” Oliphant said. “That is the Canadian position. We do not believe in non-UN-sanctioned military action. We don’t do that.”⁵

Foad Roshan / Unsplash — Smoke rises over Tehran after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on February 28, 2026. Canada was not consulted before the strikes began.

Days later, Carney expressed full support for the strike — without UN authorization. Anand told reporters she was not aware Oliphant had made those comments.

International law experts have been scathing. Nader Hashemi, a Canadian-born associate professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told Fox News Digital that Carney has been “all over the place” and that “it doesn’t look very good for him or for the government of Canada.” Former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, who helped create the International Criminal Court, accused Carney of abandoning international law. “For a country that depends on law more than force for its own security, that is not realism; it is recklessness,” Axworthy wrote.⁶

Mark Kersten, an international law professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, pointed out that just weeks earlier, at Davos, Carney had pledged that Canada would defend territorial integrity, sovereignty, and the UN Charter, and oppose the use of force unless authorized under international law. “Almost immediately,” Kersten said, “we have chosen not to do any of those things.”⁷

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong called the government’s position “utterly incoherent.” Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre accused Carney of “confusing our allies and dividing Canadians” by repeatedly shifting positions. Conservative defence critic James Bezan called for a parliamentary debate before any military deployment, saying the decision should be made “in public so there’s transparency, in the House of Commons.”⁸

The NDP condemned the government from the other side. Alexandre Boulerice, the party’s foreign affairs critic, said the NDP “deplores the Carney government’s decision to blindly support this dangerous venture by Israel and Donald Trump’s administration.”

Meanwhile, 200 Canadian military personnel remain stationed across six locations in the Middle East. An Iranian strike damaged the Canadian section of a Kuwait airbase on March 1. The government said nothing about it for eleven days. The Defence Minister initially said he learned about the damage from a newspaper — then walked it back hours later. The Foreign Affairs Minister said she was not “privy” to the reporting.⁹

In the space of four weeks, the Liberal government supported the strikes, regretted the strikes, said the strikes may violate international law, refused to rule out joining the strikes, said Canada will not participate, then outlined criteria for potential involvement — while one of Anand’s own officials was on tape saying the government does not support non-UN-sanctioned military action. This is not a policy. It is a record of a government saying whatever seems safest in the moment, to whichever audience is in the room.