Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate your presence here and the testimony of all others. As we said earlier in our study, if any witnesses are harassed or intimidated in relation to their testimony, they should let the committee clerk know.
With respect to Mr. Horak, it's good to see you here. I know about your work in the past and that you have served as a Canadian diplomat for many years, including in Iran and other countries. You spoke about the importance of clearly checking Iran. In no way, shape, or form are we giving Iran a pass with respect to all of the crimes that have been committed by the Iran government, the many that we can enumerate and have enumerated.
As a diplomat of the past, you did touch upon the importance of relations between countries. I'd like to allow you to have more time to speak about that and to note that in September 2012, we closed our mission here, of Iran to Canada. The Iranian diplomats were not permitted to stay. Since then, Italy has served as Canada's protecting power. Do you want to speak about that in particular, please?