Iran and Canada Relations Main Obstacles and Bilateral Perspectives

Abstract:Despite Iran’s critical relations with USA since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Canada had often played the role of an honest broker and maintained relations with Iran, con-trary to the US. Although the Canadian Government has not viewed the Iranian regime as democratic actor, it was interested in pursuing diplomacy for moderating the Iranian Policies too. Iran and Canada relations have passed the numerous ups and downs in the diplomatic, political and economic affairs. As our major question, this study aims at in-vestigating the main factors, which affect the structure of bilateral relations. Canada has controlled engagement policy limits talks with Iran down to four main subjects: Iran’s human rights situation, its regional role, notably towards Israel and the Middle East Peace Process, its nuclear program and an unfair accusation claiming a supportive role for Iran in world terrorism. Insisting on the principles of its foreign policy with its own reasonable justifications, Iran has tried to test various ways for conserving some levels of cooperation particularity economic and for keeping so the limited links with North America. Relaying on discourse analysis, the article tries to elaborate the related issues by looking at the perspectives of both parties.