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Opinion: The world has a responsibility to protect Iranians from their terrorist regime

When criminal regimes commit crimes against humanity and leave their populations pleading for protection, inaction is not neutrality, it's complicity

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On Feb. 28, former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy criticized Prime Minister Mark Carney for failing to condemn the American strikes on Iran as a violation of international law. Yet it is Axworthy who should be questioned for his interpretation of international laws and norms, including his neglect of one he played a leadership role in establishing.

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While serving as foreign minister, Axworthy led Canada to initiate the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which developed the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) framework. Adopted unanimously by United Nations member states at the 2005 World Summit, R2P affirms that states must protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. States bear primary responsibility, but when they fail, the international community must act.

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While the resolution adopted by the UN states that only the Security Council can authorize force, the ICISS recognized the history of the Security Council failing to act in cases of dire humanitarian need. Its 2001 report discusses the possibilities of utilizing the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism in the UN General Assembly and the role of regional and sub-regional organizations.

Crucially, the report states, “It is a real question in these circumstances where lies the most harm: in the damage to international order if the Security Council is bypassed or in the damage to that order if human beings are slaughtered while the Security Council stands by.”

Axworthy doesn’t just know this doctrine. His initiative helped build it. Yet while detailing the abuses of the Iranian regime, he insists that “change must come from within Iranian society and not through military campaigns that kill civilians.” According to the doctrine his initiative helped build, this is incorrect. Military intervention, as a last resort, is explicitly recognized by R2P.

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For 47 years, the Iranian regime has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against its own civilians, as well as Israelis, Americans, Canadians, Argentinians and many others around the world. While impoverishing its population, it pursued nuclear and ballistic weapons capabilities, openly declaring its intent to destroy Israel and the U.S., while funnelling money, weapons and support to its terror proxies. In the past two months alone, the Iranian regime has violently murdered thousands of civilian protesters, leading to pleas for international support.

Despite international sanctions, agreements such as the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and decades of negotiations with the Iranian regime, it openly admitted to its continued nuclear ambitions, in addition to building up a massive offensive missile and drone arsenal and relentlessly brutalizing its own population. Even in the days leading up to the Feb. 28 strikes by Israel and the United States, negotiations were ongoing. But the regime had no interest in a diplomatic solution, leaving the U.S. and Israel with no choice but initiate a war of last resort.

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The U.S. and Israeli strike targeting Iran’s leadership and military assets is not only clearly in line with the principles of international law, it fits within the spirit of the R2P framework. The UN Security Council and the General Assembly failed to act, but the U.S. and Israel upheld their responsibility to protect against an imminent threat to their own sovereignty and citizens, and to protect Iranian civilians from further harm.

Devastatingly, Iran is not the only case study of the failure of Canada’s leadership to recognize the role R2P must play in protecting populations and the international order. Following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, Carney generically stated that, “Canada calls on all parties to respect international law.” Similar to the responsibility to protect the Iranian people, the responsibility exists towards the people of Venezuela, who have been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, forced disappearances and more, amounting to crimes against humanity.

Never in their history have postwar international institutions shown greater contempt for the very principles they were created to uphold and never has the responsibility to protect been more vital. The UN, which was established to prevent atrocities like those the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes have committed against their own people, has instead condemned efforts to stop these crimes from continuing — efforts the people of Iran and Venezuela themselves pleaded for again and again.

R2P was not intended to be a feel-good theoretical framework. It is anchored in moral clarity that demands action in the face of mass atrocities and egregious violations of international law. Canada, with Axworthy in the lead, helped shape this norm, yet in 2026, it is failing to acknowledge the very interventions that R2P expects. Whether in Iran or Venezuela, when criminal regimes commit crimes against humanity and leave their populations pleading for protection, inaction is not neutrality, it’s complicity.

Michal Cotler-Wunsh, former Israeli legislator and special envoy for combating antisemitism, is chief executive of the International Legal Forum. Becca Wertman-Traub is chief of staff of the International Legal Forum.

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