Ottawa announces that it has expanded its regime of sanctions against the Iranian regime to include entities and individuals, including a major police force and Al Mustafa University, which serves as the organ for disseminating the revolutionary government’s radical ideology.

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“Al-Mustafa students are regularly recruited into the foreign legions of the al-Quds Brigade, the extraterritorial operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” the foreign ministry said in a statement Monday.

Many graduates of this university were recruited to support the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad during the civil war that devastated the country, they say.

The Trudeau government also sanctioned the Forces de l’ordre, “that is, the regime’s police force, a unit involved in the arbitrary arrest and killing of unarmed Iranian protesters, particularly through its special forces brigades.”

The sanctions include freezing and banning any financial transactions that may have a connection to Canadian institutions. Sanctioned individuals are also prohibited on Canadian soil.

This is now being imposed on Tehran’s police commander, Hossein Rahimi, as well as Ahmad Fazelian, Iran’s deputy attorney general, who are on Canada’s long blacklist.

Canada’s sanctions regime against Iran is not new, but it has lengthened considerably since the crackdown on protesters began following the suspected death of Masha Amini in mid-September.

The young woman died shortly after being arrested by the vice squad for wearing the Islamic veil incorrectly.

According to the Iran-based organization Human Rights Activists, the raid would have resulted in at least 270 deaths and 14,000 arrests nationwide. According to reports, protests took place in 125 cities.
To date, 93 individuals and 179 Iranian entities have been sanctioned by Ottawa, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.