Cultural Exchanges

He is, of course, paying handsomely for the privilege of attending university in Canada.  Foreign students do.  Which is precisely why Carleton University, among other Canadian institutes of higher learning make a deliberate and pronounced effort to entice foreign students from around the Globe to choose to come to Canada on a student visa, and to obtain their degrees here.

In many instances some of those students, upon completion of their degree decide to remain in Canada and apply for permanent resident status. It's a business choice for the universities, a handsome, money-making one at that, and one that enhances their reputation if they do attract enough students to special studies programs.

It's also a questionable decision to embark upon when university space is limited and allocating certain spaces to foreign students means that there may well be a shortage for aspiring Canadians wishing to attend those universities and the courses of their choice.  Carleton University, for one has graduated over 400 students since 2001, many in a Master of Business Administration.

In the instance of Behrooz Tabesh, 27, who studies computer science at Concordia University, but who was in Ottawa recently to visit the Iranian Embassy, it is highly unlikely that he will plan to remain in Canada once his degree has been accomplished.  "I believe it's a silly move of the Mickey Mouse government of Canada to shut down our embassy", he said.

He is entitled to his beliefs, one only wonders why he has chosen to attend an institute of higher learning in a Mickey Mouse country.  Could it be that the educational opportunities in a country that has defied international opinion, the UN, and the IAEA, so focused on its drive to accomplish a high degree of enriched uranium for weapons production it ignores other aspects of science and technology?

Or might it be planning on its foreign students through a form of espionage picking up scientific advances not otherwise to be acquired.  In the case of computer science, to sharpen skills enabling Iranian specialists to more professionally protect vital computerized systems infected by harmful viruses like Stuxnet? 

Mr. Tabesh took umbrage at the decision of Foreign Affairs that led to the note in Farsi pasted to the front door of the Iranian Embassy reading "According to a hostile decision by the government of Canada, we are closed and no longer working".  Not in Canada, in any event.  As for foreign student Ehsan Mohammadi, president of the Iranian Culture Association of Carleton University, perhaps it is time to decamp.

Studying in Canada will be of far less interest to him as the son of an Iranian diplomat now that his overseers are leaving.  His close ties to official Iran, and his presidency of the Carleton University Iranian Culture Association, linked to the embassy itself, will have been brought to a screeching halt.  No longer will the embassy and his culture association be mounting special accolades to Iranian culture and the cult of Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeni, the mastermind behind the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

The news of the impending departure of the Iranian delegation to Canada came as welcome news, though, to others of Iranian descent, now Canadians by choice.  Shabnam Assadollahi who has been lobbying to have the diplomats expelled said the Iranian Cultural Centre, attached to the embassy designed itself to intimidate Iranian-Canadians, and to enlist them in serving the interests of the regime.

The arrogance of the Iranian regime, and its history of bitterly vitriolic relations with the West, alongside its rather nasty threats of extermination of Israel, underscored by its vicious human rights record, its harsh theocratic dictatorial treatment of its own people, and its penchant for supporting and initiating terrorist activity abroad have long marked it as a malicious threat to the world.

Its malign influence in Canada will not be missed.  Its hand in distributing abusively extremist literature into the curricula of Canadian Islamic schools has done more than enough harm.