The airstrike on Saudi Arabia this week is more than a little troubling for many reasons. 

Not the least of which is what appears to be a ramping up of tensions by the mullahs of Iran. Whatever their protestations to the contrary, as the U.S. Secretary of State said, there’s no doubt Iran was behind it. 

The Houthis in Yemen may have claimed responsibility, but that doesn’t stand up to any level of scrutiny. And, even if it did, they are funded by the mullahs of Iran and do their bidding. 

When we look at satellite images we note the hits on the Saudi storage tanks appear to be on the northwest side, where Iran and Iraq is located. Yemen is well to the south west. 

Another striking aspect is the Saudis were unable to stop the attack considering the millions they have spent on air defence. This tells us a couple of things. 

First, the attack was likely the product of slow-moving drones or UAVs. Saudi air defence is set up to defend against conventional air attack using fighters and bombers. 

Clearly, they have to re-think how they are defending themselves. But so too must all western nations inasmuch as we all use the same essential air defences as the Saudis. 

But that, in the great scheme of things is not the most disturbing aspect of the attack on the Saudi oil production facilities. No, the surprising aspect was the precision of the attack. This satellite image shows direct hits on four storage tanks from the same northwesterly direction. 

The U.S. has long had laser and GPS guided precision munitions. We saw that in the first Gulf War. Who can forget the live images of the cruise missiles being guided into direct strikes on specific buildings in Baghdad?

Even in the second Gulf War when the U.S. launched ‘Shock and Awe’ we saw their unique ability to hit specific targets while sparing civilian buildings in close proximity. 

But now it appears that the Iranian mullahs may well have the same capability. That changes the equation significantly. 

There seems to be little doubt there is going to be some kind of showdown between Iran and the Western allies, which now includes the Saudis. Iran is being squeezed to death economically by the West, notwithstanding the efforts of French President Macron to breathe fiscal life into them.

U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to get the mullahs to the negotiating table and thus far, they seem bent on suicide, because that is what they face if they refuse to negotiate. Whether it be by their own hand or a military confrontation with Western Allies including Israel, Jordan and the Saudis. What is patently obvious, and as has been stated by Trump and Israeli PM Netanyahu is that Iran must never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. 

The Iranian escalation with the attack on the Saudi oil production facilities just underlines that position. What might they do with a nuclear weapon? These are not rational people and that is not likely to change anytime soon.

Frankly, the world’s best hope is for an uprising from within, some sort of Iranian spring so to speak. For the sake of the world, the mullahs need to be dethroned or eliminated. How that happens is yet to be determined. But happen, it must.

BY: ANTHONY FUREY

The biggest political upheavals in Western politics in recent years is Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump. While there are many people who would like to pretend these disruptors never occurred, magically wish them away, or simply go back to their idea of “normal” once they have passed, that’s not going to happen. Things have changed, permanently. 

The biggest change is that a key assumption that long went unchallenged by liberal voices is now falling apart. It’s a hard assumption to sum up in one word or even one sentence. But I’ll give the latter a shot: It’s the idea that the nations of the world can come together ever closer via international institutions and agree upon the same objectives for the future of humanity and accomplish them together.

It would be a nice idea were it true. 

There’s quite a pleasant kumbaya element to it. It’s proving to be more difficult than first thought though. Now that countries guided by entirely different systems of government, political ideologies, leadership figures and dominant religions are getting a closer look at each other, they’re diverging on some major issues.

There are issues rising to the fore in this new paradigm that matter more than others, they’re ones that a country needs to have staked out clear terrain on and knows where it wants to go.

Foreign affairs is the big picture one. You need to know who you are, what your place is in the world and what you want from other countries. It seems simple at first. But is it? 

Canadians are terrible at defining themselves and what makes their country unique. They usually reflexively reach for something like “diversity is our strength”. That won’t suffice for much longer.

Defence policy is a huge matter. We nod in agreement that Canada should contribute 2% of its GDP towards defence – something all NATO members are supposed to do – but then we never actually do it and along the way we find we’re having trouble keeping our enrolment numbers up in the Force, we have pilot retention problems and we’re way behind when it comes to shipbuilding.

Immigration, as I’ve written before, is a serious issue. As travel becomes cheaper and more accessible, more people will attempt to migrate – whether by showing up at our border and making refugee claims or as economic migrants. We need to have a proper national conversation without weaponizing the issue by calling people racist and other cheap shots. How many people do we want to admit? What parts of the world, if any, should we prioritize? How will we improve immigration? Should our rules become stricter or, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done, looser?

The value of international institutions is also something that needs to be discussed. Canadians increasing view the United Nations with skepticism. Do we want to place great weight in a body that puts Saudi Arabia on the human rights council? Whatever we think of climate change, do we want to throw hundreds of millions of our money into this “green climate fund”? Do we believe that we can turn international gabfests into anything other than the triumph of the lowest common denominator?

These are some of the big issues that are in flux in today’s changing world. You wouldn’t know it though. Not here in Canada. 

We’re a full week into the federal election campaign and, at the time of writing, the issues discussed have been little more than “gotcha” attacks. It’s time for some real issues and big picture thinking.

Last week, I said the Commissioner of the RCMP needed to communicate with Canadians about the senior employee of the Force who was arrested last week and to discuss what had happened and what the risk was to the country. Cameron Ortis was charged with five counts, three under what was formerly called the Official Secrets Act and two Criminal Code violations including Breach of Trust by a Public Official. 

Well, the Commissioner held a press conference on Tuesday and gave us some information but still left a lot of questions, but at least it was a good start. 

Brenda Lucki was appointed to the commissioner’s position last year after a search committee headed by former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna recommended her to the Prime Minister. Until Tuesday she had been remarkably quiet in terms of having a public profile. 

Events of last week have forced her hand and, good for her, she accepted the challenge the situation presented. 

Lucki wasn’t able to provide much in the way of details, but she did provide some insight into what is the largest breach of security in RCMP history. 

What we do know is that the Mounties were working with the FBI looking into a Canadian company based in Vancouver that was selling re-programmed cellphones, primarily Blackberrys, enabled with specialized encryption that police were not able to penetrate and monitor. 

In turn, they routed the encrypted traffic through offshore servers in places like Panama to make things even more difficult for law enforcement. 

We don’t know how the FBI got on to this, but we can guess it was because of an arrest of someone with one of these devices that forensic analysis showed the non-standard encryption. 

Because their investigation involved a Canadian company, the RCMP became involved in the endeavours of the FBI. According to Lucki, during that investigation information became apparent that there was a leak or source of information within the RCMP. Their worst nightmare. 

The Mounties did what they had to do without letting Ortis know they were on to him and to let him continue doing what he was doing. Digging himself a deeper hole as it were. 

That is all as it should be and the Force appears to have acted appropriately once they learned of the information breach. 

But, what we don’t yet know is what the breach entailed and was national security involved?  If the breach involved is just the encryption of handheld devices for about 40,000 of the world’s bad guys, that’s bad enough. If some of those bad guys were involved with nation states, that’s another thing entirely. 

Spies use things like encrypted devices. What was Ortis’ involvement? Did he, with his expertise, design the encryption the bad guys were using? Or perhaps, just advising? We don’t know and Lucki was not forthcoming. 

What she did say that was enlightening was tacitly admitting that the RCMP were in fact investigating the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the involvement of the Prime Minister and his office as well as senior members of the Privy Council Office including Michael Wernick who resigned as a result of the exposure of his actions. 

We are left in the midst of an election campaign with a Prime Minister whose government is involved in at least one RCMP investigation perhaps more. That is an issue. 

Lucki didn’t say specifically, but what might happen if in 4 weeks Trudeau is re-elected as PM and the RCMP complete their investigation and determine the Prime Minister should be charged with the crime of attempting to obstruct justice?

That is the difficulty with not being forthright with Canadians.