Mr. Chair, there is no question that what we are seeing taking place in the Middle East today, and Syria, in particular, is that we have a regime in Iran that has been contributing to this destabilizing factor.
They have funded both dollars and weapons to the al Assad regime in Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They are also providing weapons and support to the Houthis who have started the civil war in Yemen.
There is no question that theocracy, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, wants to expand that theocracy throughout the region and promote its warped sense of religion and statehood as a Shia caliphate.
We do have a situation that we need to address. That is why it is so important that we deal with this issue of possible military dimensions that are occurring in Iran and what they are trying to do with nuclear weapons.
If I may, I will continue on with some of the things that we are seeing.
On top of the Security Council resolutions from the United Nations that it has been violation of, the National Council Resistance of Iran, back in 2002, revealed that Iran had undeclared nuclear sites, including a uranium enrichment site at Natanz.
Similarly, in 2009, the world learned that Iran had built a hardened underground enrichment facility in Fordow.
In both cases, Iran only admitted to what it had done once it was caught red-handed. In both cases, Iran was legally obligated to notify the IAEA of these activities in advance.
The rules that Canada and all the rest of the nuclear powers in the world have to follow do not seem to apply to Iran. For more than two decades, Iran has conducted secret prolific and sensitive activities with military applications, with ballistic missile devices, and we can only see that they want to develop nuclear weapons to destabilize the region and, indeed, the world.