The United States and Israel strike Iran without declaring war — no formal process, no congressional declaration, no UN authorization — and Canada’s response is essentially: we support it.

Not cautiously. Not conditionally. Not “we urge restraint.” Just straight alignment.

The official line reads like it was drafted in Washington and couriered north for signature:

“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.”

And what makes it sting is the memory of Davos. Because I remember the tone. I remember the gravity. I remember the lecture about great-power rivalry and the fading rules-based order. I remember the warning about Thucydides — that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must — and the insistence that this fatalism was not inevitable.

We were told that going along to get along does not buy safety. We were told accommodation is not strategy. We were told compliance does not equal security. So what exactly is this?

Because it looks a lot like going along. It feels a lot like accommodating. It smells like hoping proximity to power will keep the trade channels warm. Are we really pretending this is about principle? Or is this about CUSMA leverage? Market access? Avoiding tariffs? Making sure the Americans don’t get testy at the negotiating table?

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second.

Prior to May 8, 2018, the United States — alongside China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union — negotiated the JCPOA. The Iran nuclear deal. It capped enrichment. It imposed inspections. It tied sanctions relief to compliance. It was multilateral. It was monitored. It was working by the assessment of international inspectors.

Then Trump tore it up.

Not because inspectors said Iran was violating the agreement. Not because the structure was failing. But because it was Obama’s deal. Because repudiation had become policy. Because domestic political theatre outweighed international continuity.

That decision destabilized the region more than the agreement ever did. And now we behave as if history began yesterday.

Then there’s the moral flourish in the Canadian statement — that:

Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, that it has one of the world’s worst human rights records, that it must never obtain nuclear weapons.

Fine. Iran’s human rights record is indefensible. No serious person denies that.

But the moral clarity rings hollow when delivered by a government simultaneously signing trade deals with India and China — states with documented repression, suppression of minorities, intimidation of diaspora communities, election interference, and their own destabilizing regional conduct.

We don’t suspend trade talks over those realities. We don’t issue existential statements about instability when contracts are on the table.

So let’s stop pretending this is a clean moral hierarchy. This is selective outrage calibrated to power.

We will condemn loudly when condemnation costs nothing. We will partner quietly when partnership pays dividends.

And that’s the part that’s embarrassing.

Not that geopolitics is complicated. It is. Not that Iran is blameless. It isn’t.

But that we posture as defenders of international law while endorsing actions that sidestep it. That we lecture about the erosion of a rules-based order while applauding moves that accelerate it.

You cannot stand at Davos and warn about the strong doing what they can, then turn around and nod approvingly when the strong do exactly that.

If we’re going to be aligned with Washington regardless of process, then just say that. Say we are structurally bound. Say our economy dictates it. Say our defence posture dictates it. Say we cannot afford divergence. But don’t dress it up as principle.

Because the more we speak in the language of sovereign moral authority while acting like a cautious subcontractor of American power, the thinner that language becomes.

Middle power rhetoric meets junior vassal reality.

And if the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must — we should be careful about quoting Thucydides unless we’re prepared to stand somewhere other than the chorus line.