Overwhelming support among Iranian Canadians for regime change, community survey finds
Nine in ten Iranian Canadians “strongly or somewhat support regime change in Iran,” according to a new community survey.
The survey was conducted by the Metropolis Institute (a division of the Association for Canadian Studies) on behalf of the non-profit Advancement of Human Rights Organization for the Middle East (AHROME). Metropolis Institute distributed 1,768 surveys between March 29 and April 13, most of them at large Iranian community gatherings in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, and 1,166 were fully completed.
Kevin Rod, president of AHROME, told National Post the findings were to be expected.
“Knowing our diaspora community, I was not surprised by any of the responses,” Rod, a practising physician and member of the Iranian Canadian community, said in a written statement.
The figures were even higher when it came to levels of “very unfavourable opinion of the current Iranian government” (92.3 per cent), and reached near-unanimous levels among respondents agreeing that the “regime mostly does not or does not represent the will of the Iranian people” (98.4 per cent) and those expressing a desire for “at least normal diplomatic relations with Israel in the future” (95.9 per cent).
The survey found similarly high levels of support for the joint Israeli-American military campaign against Iran, which began in late February. An overwhelming majority (90.2 per cent) of Iranian Canadians “strongly or somewhat approve of international military actions against the Iranian government,” and a similar number (89.4 per cent) believe “such actions contribute at least somewhat to political change in Iran.”
Rod called on the Canadian government to listen to the voices of Iranian Canadians when deciding how the country responds to the ongoing conflict. “Given the large Iranian diaspora in Canada and Canada’s history of supporting human rights around the world, the Canadian government is well placed to lead the way in raising awareness and supporting the people of Iran (in) their struggle to change this regime,” Rod said.
According to a Statistics Canada census from 2021, there are roughly 200,000 Iranian Canadians in the country and another 80,000 who identify as “Persian,” the largest ethnic group in Iran.
Most of the community survey respondents said they are “very or somewhat attached to Canada” and 84.2 per cent said “yes or probably” to having a “long-term future in Canada.”
The majority of Iranian Canadians arrived following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the overthrow of the monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the rise of Islamic cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. Before 1980, Statistics Canada data shows just over 2,000 people born in Iran had immigrated to Canada.
Support for the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, currently living in the United States, remains high among Iranian Canadians, the survey noted. Nearly all (98.6 per cent) members of the community are “very or somewhat familiar” with Pahlavi and 89 per cent have a “very or somewhat favourable overall opinion” of him. Similar rates were found when respondents were asked whether Pahlavi should “play a political role in Iran’s future” (90.2 per cent) and 89.4 per cent feel he is “suitable as a unifying figure for opposition.”
“There is no confusion about who the Iranians inside Iran and the Iranian diaspora want as their leader,” Rod said. “This leader is Prince Reza Pahlavi, this is the only name called by the people of Iran and his name was written by their blood on the walls of their cities.”
Rod encouraged Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to play a proactive role in the community’s ongoing struggle to remove the current regime.
“Any acts of giving legitimacy to the regime of Iran, like voting in favour of them joining a human rights committee in (the) UN (United Nations) after they killed tens of thousands of their own citizens” would alienate Iranian Canadians, he said.
Although support for regime change remains very high among the Iranian Canadian diaspora, the vast majority (93.6 per cent) of respondents were “somewhat or very concerned” about the wellbeing of family members back in Iran.
“The Iranian Canadian community echo the voices of their relatives and compatriots in Iran and they see this campaign as a historic liberating campaign against a regime that has indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of unarmed protesters just to stay in power,” Rod said.
The survey is a non-probability sample, so a conventional margin of error does not apply. A probability sample of the same size would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20, but cannot be applied in this case.
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