'Canada is the most infiltrated country': Iranian Canadians fear the regime's borderless terror

Toronto resident Daniel was not in Iran’s good books even before Israel and the United States showered the country with missiles and bombs last month. While working as a telecommunications supplier in Iran, he says he deliberately sabotaged schemes to evade sanctions and import equipment for military use, earning the regime’s ire. A member of Iran’s tiny Jewish community, he eventually fled the Islamic Republic and ended up in Canada a decade ago. But in the wake of the short-lived Iran-Israel war, military officials called in his brother, mother and sister-in-law for hours of interrogation about their Canadian relative. The officials claimed Daniel, who asked that his last name be withheld for security reasons, was a spy for Israel. As evidence, they cited the reports he contributed to Israel Pars , an online TV station catering to Israel’s Farsi-speaking minority. “They told my brother, ‘We know where he is, where he is living with his family, and we are going to execute him,’ ” Daniel quoted his relatives as telling him by phone. “ ’We got the order from the court to execute him.’ ” Daniel, who has a wife and two-year-old boy, takes the officials’ violent threat seriously. “I don’t care about myself. (But) I have been living in a state of fear because of my son. If something happened to me his life really would be destroyed.” It may be an extreme case, but such dread is not uncommon within Canada’s Iranian diaspora, a group estimated to number 400,000 people. As Iran once more becomes a focal point of Middle East tensions, many Iranian Canadians live with a troubling anxiety. They typically emigrated to escape a system marked by rampant human-rights abuses, stifling censorship and harshly enforced religious edicts. Now some feel like they never truly left the Islamic Republic behind. No Iranian official has been based here since Canada cut off diplomatic ties in 2012. But there are numerous reports of intimidation of Canadians who speak out against the regime, evidence of planned kidnapping and assassination plots — at least one contracted out to Hell’s Angels — a steady stream of senior Iranian government figures entering Canada, and suspicions of widespread money laundering by the regime and its proxies. A would-be Conservative candidate for Parliament believes a nomination contest was tainted by misinformation orchestrated by Iran. And a prominent human-rights lawyer even warned that Iranian sleeper cells may be activated in the recent war’s aftermath. Anita Anand, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, said she shared Irwin Cotler’s concern. The Iranian-Canadian experience has been double-edged: it’s an impressive immigration success story, unfolding under a dark shadow cast from 10,000 kilometres away. “I was supposed to live in Canada in safety, in peace, enjoying my life, enjoying my freedoms,” said Ardeshir Zarezadeh, a Toronto legal advisor and human-rights activist who spent years in prison in Iran. “But in Canada itself we can’t live in peace and freedom.” Even those who lost loved ones in Iran’s shooting down of an airliner packed with Canadian citizens and permanent residents have felt Tehran’s grip, citing threatening calls and demands to stay quiet. The Iranian newspaper Farheekhtegan — Farsi for intellectuals — published a full-page spread last October headlined by the statement “United Iran against the murderers.” The piece featured photos of six alleged “murderers” with targets superimposed over their faces. They included then-U.S. vice president Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli defence minister at the time, and Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran. The sixth person? Hamed Esmaeilion, a Toronto dentist. The Canadian citizen has been an outspoken critic of the regime but, he says with a wry laugh, “I have never murdered anybody.” Esmaeilion can state without question, though, that Tehran killed his wife and nine-year-old daughter. They were on Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752, shot down by Iran just outside Tehran in 2020. Iran says it was an accident; family members and others suspect the attack was deliberate. “I call it the borderless empire of terror and fear,” says Esmaeilion of Iran’s worldwide tentacles. At the same time, Iranian Canadians subjected to harassment and worried about a steady stream of regime officials settling in or visiting Canada, say security services don’t pay enough heed to their complaints. “I would argue Canada is the most infiltrated country in the western world,” says Alireza Nader, a Washington, D.C.-based Iran analyst who prepared a study on Tehran’s interference in Canada for the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Canada is actually well-known as a haven for the regime. People (in the Iranian community) joke about it. It is part of the popular culture.” RCMP spokesman Marie-Eve Breton declined to say how many complaints it has received about interference from Iran or to detail how it responds to them, citing “operational reasons.” That said, the Mounties take threats “very seriously” and will investigate if there is a suspicion of criminal or other illegal activity, she said. But the diaspora that has grown up here since the 1979 Islamic revolution — full of professionals, entrepreneurs and academics — is not unanimous in its dim view of the Iranian government. Some groups have tended to avoid stiff criticism of Tehran, and sometimes echoed its viewpoints. A rally against Israeli attacks last month — called “Hands-off Iran ” — included people waving the Islamic Republic flag, a symbol of oppression to some expatriates. Competing vigils for the PS752 victims in 2020 — one involving regime critics, the other factions more sympathetic to Tehran — ended in a physical fight that required police intervention. Organizations like the Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC), a co-sponsor of Hands-off Iran, have been accused of being apologists for the Islamic Republic. The ICC denies the charge and says it simply wants peace, the end to sanctions against Iran and restoration of Canada-Iran diplomatic ties. “Iranian Canadian activists who oppose military action or sanctions, citing their detrimental impact on the Iranian populace and regional peace and stability, are frequently discredited by hardline political factions,” the ICC told the federal Foreign Interference Commission. “These factions prioritize regime change in Tehran over all else, disregarding both Canada’s interests and the potential harm that increased instability may inflict on the people of Iran.” Complicating the divisions right now are events in the Middle East. Even some staunch opponents of the Iranian regime and its allies like Hamas and Hezbollah are disturbed by the Gaza war. After Iranian-backed Hamas crossed over from the strip and massacred 1,200 Israelis, Israel’s armed forces responded with operations that have killed more than 50,000 Palestinian fighters and civilians and laid waste to much of the territory. There are “mixed feelings,” says Esmaeilion. And the exchange of missiles and drones between Iran and Israel, combined with the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, has triggered a vicious crackdown by Tehran on alleged “spies” and dissidents, noted Zarezadeh. “Weakening the regime is good, but what’s next?” he asks. “If this is going to create a lot of damage (to the democracy movement) … mass executions … what is the point?” Like so many other burgeoning ethnic communities in Canada, Iranians were a rare presence here for most of the 20th century. But that began to change as the revolution transformed their homeland into a theocratic state steered by unelected clerics. First came people seeking political asylum, then middle-class strivers wanting a freer, more enriching life, especially for women whose existence is tightly constricted in Iran. Many have settled in Vancouver and its suburbs, but the greatest concentration live in the northern reaches of the Greater Toronto Area. The enclave is predictably nicknamed Tehranto, the main streets in some neighbourhoods lined with Iranian restaurants and other businesses. The group includes a surprising number of high achievers. Esmaeilion says he knew of a couple hundred dentists of Iranian extraction in Canada when he emigrated in 2010. Now they number well over 1,000, he said. “You can say the same thing about medical doctors, you can say the same about lawyers, about engineers.” The make-up of the diaspora is partly a result of “selection bias,” says lawyer Kaveh Shahrooz, a rights activist in Toronto. Many are people who had the wherewithal and money to get out of Iran, while Canadian laws in the past favoured newcomers who could invest sizeable sums here, he said. Plus, the culture promotes education and career success. Shahrooz believes the most recent waves include many people who did well economically under the Ayatollahs and retain a sympathy for the regime or even continued business links in Iran. Esmaeilion disagrees. If anything, he argues, the newest arrivals are more disenchanted than anyone about the Islamic autocracy. There’s a lack of polling data breaking down exactly what portion of Iranian Canadians are staunch opponents of the Iranian regime. But critics insist it’s the majority, even if many are too afraid to speak out. The dissidents cite in part two rallies held in 2022. They supported protests in Iran over the death in custody of a young woman arrested for wearing an insufficiently modest hijab. Both “Woman Life Freedom” events in the Greater Toronto area attracted an estimated 50,000 people — a significant chunk of local Iranian Canadians — while cities across Canada held smaller demonstrations, noted Zarezadeh. The Iranian Canadian Congress did not respond to requests for comment by deadline, but it has noted that a petition calling for renewed diplomatic relations with Iran gathered 16,000 signatures; one opposing the idea only a few hundred. Still, for those Canadians who do publicly criticize the regime, the consequences can be chilling. A 2021 U.S. indictment accused Iranian intelligence operatives of planning to kidnap and fly to Iran Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad. The same group, prosecutors said, was plotting to snatch three unnamed Canadian opponents of the regime. The FBI has since charged multiple people tied to Iran with conspiring to actually assassinate Alinejad. Last year, U.S. attorneys indicted two Canadian Hell’s Angels members , accusing them of working at the behest of Iranian intelligence to assassinate dissidents in Maryland. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s most recent annual report says it continues to investigate “credible intelligence” about death threats against Canadians emanating from Iran, often using proxies like organized crime figures. The targets are “perceived enemies” living abroad, and the threats to Canadians may increase as tensions heighten in the Middle East, said the spy agency. Iran also uses “malicious cyber activity” to repress and manipulate Canada-based opponents, the CSIS report said. In its submissions to the Foreign Interference Commission, the Iranian Canadian Congress did not dwell on actions by Tehran. It focused instead on threats it says it and similar groups face closer to home, saying it should be “protected from information wars organized by media outlets established with foreign investments by authoritarian or democratic states.” But individual Iranian Canadians have reported first-hand experience with a range of intimidation by Tehran. Ardeshir Zarezadeh, the Toronto legal advisor, says he spent a total of seven years in prison, including two in solitary confinement, for helping organize student protests and the like in Iran. He fled through mountains to Turkey and ended up here in 2006. But he continues to be dogged by the regime, he says. A suspicious Iranian man called from a pay phone, then showed up unannounced at his office in 2019. Zarezadeh notified both the RCMP and FBI. The Americans responded promptly, informing him that his visitor was an Iranian intelligence officer. Zerezadeh says he never heard back from the Mounties. Then in 2022, he said Iranian intelligence contacted a friend of his, demanding the friend turn over Zerezadeh’s home address or see all his business interests in Iran destroyed. Esmaeilion lost his family in Iran’s destruction of flight PS752 but he says that hasn’t stopped the regime from targeting him. His 76-year-old father was interrogated for two hours in May 2024 about his son’s activities in Canada, while his parents were banned from leaving Iran for a year. Esmaeilion’s mother finally made it here earlier this year but after she returned to Iran two months ago, her passport was seized again. Esmaeilion posted on X in 2023 when the community discovered by chance that Seyed Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi — a former Iranian health minister — was on vacation in Canada, even as Iran continued to evade accountability for the plane shoot-down. While in Toronto, the minister did an interview with Iranian media in which he vowed retaliation against Esmaeilion and others whose posts had interrupted his holiday. The federal government eventually banned Hashemi from entering Canada for 36 months, but Esmaeilion says police told him they could do nothing about the threat. Shahrooz said he often receives threats online and gets regular warnings from Google that state-based actors have been trying to hack into his accounts. After he did an interview with the Voice of America’s Farsi-language service, relatives in Iran were taken in for interrogation about him. But he considers his experience last year campaigning for the Conservative nomination in the federal riding of Richmond Hill as particularly troubling. He had not even officially announced he was running for the candidacy when posts started proliferating online that falsely accused him of being a member of Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the anti-regime group that Canada once designated as a terrorist entity. It’s widely unpopular with both regime opponents and supporters. The smear campaign had an organized tone to it and included references to a particular relative who had been a MEK member, a fact that few people without access to Iranian security files would know, says Shahrooz. “My name would trend on Twitter, for example, twice in a week — because I’m running for a nomination in a suburb of Toronto. It doesn’t make any sense unless there is an organized cyber army of Iran’s regime working to undermine me.” He says Conservative Party officials were not receptive to his reports of intimidation and when they closed the nomination race early, before he had time to sign up many of the crucial new members, the Harvard law graduate ended his run. Mariyam Shafipour was a prominent student activist in Iran and spent two years in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, making her way to Canada after being released. She’s continued her opposition here, resulting in the intimidation of her sisters by Iranian security services, she told the Human Rights Talks podcast earlier this year. And there have been ominous signs of not just digital, but physical surveillance here in Canada. Officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Canada designated as terrorist last year, told one of her sisters that Shafipour’s apartment overlooked a school and that she owned three cats, she told CBC TV in 2022. Both were accurate observations. Such experiences help explain deep concern in the community about another phenomenon. Current or former officials of the regime routinely seem to show up in Canada, while some refugee claimants and relatives of ordinary people — including family of the PS752 victims — are regularly denied visitor visas. Zarezadeh said he’s received numerous reports of former IRGC officials entering Canada, which he plans to pass on to authorities. Vancouver lawyer Mojdeh Shahriari has said she’s collected hundreds of reports of various senior officials obtaining Canadian visas. Nader, the Washington-based analyst, said he was shocked to learn that Mahdi Nasiri , the head of hard-line newspaper Kayhan in late-1990s Iran, then an adviser to the government, had arrived in Canada earlier this spring. Nasiri told CBC News that he’d been a critic of the regime for six years and was a “liberal” now. Nader and other regime critics were doubtful. Morteza Talaei, who as Tehran police chief oversaw a crackdown on women’s dress and took part in the bloody response to student protests in 1999, was spotted in Richmond Hill , north of Toronto, three years ago. Critics accused him of rank hypocrisy, with video showing him exercising in a local gym next to women in workout outfits, public attire he would have considered criminal in his old job. The federal government is trying to stem the tide. A law passed in 2022 and updated last year now bars entry to Canada of anyone who was a senior Iranian official as far back as 2003. And there seems no shortage of cases. Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada has cancelled 131 visas under the law, while Canada Border Services Agency has opened 115 investigations. Half of those were deemed to not be senior officials, but the rest are still being reviewed or enforcement action taken, said Luke Reimer, a CBSA spokesman. The agency has reported 20 alleged senior officials who are in Canada for inadmissibility hearings. But as of June, only three had been ordered deported — and one of those actually removed from the country, Reimer said. Coupled with the arrival of figures from the Iranian government are fears of rampant money laundering. The proliferation of money-exchange services in Iranian-Canadian neighbourhoods underscores the problem, says Esmaeilion. One such business told a friend that it processes millions of dollars in transfers to and from Iran every day, he said. National Post was unable to verify that claim. But the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Ottawa’s anti-money-laundering watchdog, is planning to require financial institutions to more closely monitor cash flowing to and from Iran, the Globe and Mail reported recently. The number of “suspicious transaction reports” involving Iran and filed with the centre is already soaring, to 19,572 in 2024-25, from 6,866 in 2023-24, the Globe said. All of this — intimidation, frequent visits by regime heavyweights and alleged money laundering — is transpiring 13 years after the Iranian embassy in Canada was shuttered. But Daniel, for one, has no doubts about the regime’s ability to function here, with or without an official presence. As he contemplates the Iranian threat to “execute” him, Daniel notes IRGC officials showed his family photographs of him, his wife and son, and knew his correct Canadian address. “When I was in Iran, because of my business, I knew a lot of high-level government people. One of those guys one time told me, ‘the hub of spying in North America is in Canada,’” he says, a suggestion the Post could not independently verify. “They have the financial support, they have the people to support them. They are capable of doing many things in Canada.”