Thank you all for your testimony.
Professor Juneau, I want to dig down a little into your hypothesis that our government's decision to not eliminate sanctions is some sort of political trap that we're caught in and not an act of principled policy, because that's certainly the way I see it.
In making the announcement when the P5+1 sanctions were eliminated, Minister Dion framed it as follows. He said that our eyes are wide open. He went on to say:
Canada will lift its sanctions but will maintain a level of mistrust for a regime that must not have nuclear weapons, a regime that is a danger to human rights and is not a friend to our allies, including Israel.
He also pointed out the state sponsor of terrorism, that there must be an accountability for those things before any reduction in Canada's additional sanctions would be taking place.
I'm wondering if you could look at the situation with Iran now. Are we not seeing Iran as a country that has increased its rate of executions under Rouhani, and they've actually gone up over the last couple of years?
In terms of incitement against Israel, rocket launches with kind of cryptic messages on the side targeting the State of Israel. In terms of state sponsor of terrorism, Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, is functioning on the ground in Syria adding to the catastrophic situation being faced in areas like Aleppo and others. With all of these things, given the state of intention, that the additional sanctions would not be lifted until there was accountability for Iran's human rights record, and its record of the state sponsor of terror, and it's record of incitement against the State of Israel, does that not suggest we have a principled policy that we've chosen to follow, rather than just a political statement?