Complicating the re-engagement process is Iran’s ongoing and dubious incarceration of at least two Canada-linked prisoners.

Homa Hoodfar, a Concordia University anthropology professor who writes about culture and gender, was arrested in June. According to Iranian media, she’s been charged with collaborating with a hostile government and spreading propaganda against the state. Hoodfar’s family recently reported that she is being held in solitary confinement. Her health is failing so badly, they said (she suffers from a rare neurological disease) that she can hardly walk or talk.

Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian permanent resident, has been jailed since 2008, accused of producing obscene materials and propagandizing against the Islamic Republic. He has had two death sentences suspended.

Re-engagement may be a chance for Canada to secure the release of Malekpour and Hoodfar—or their continued incarceration may be proof that the Iranian regime deserves only continued isolation.

On this, and on much else regarding the restoration of diplomatic ties—including human rights, business opportunities, Canada’s obligations to its allies, Ottawa’s potential influence in the region and whether re-engagement might facilitate Iranian espionage and other underhanded activities in Canada—there is little consensus. Even those who have been most affected by the Iranian regime’s cruelty are divided. 

Bahari favours re-engagement—as a means to protect Canadians in Iran, for the convenience of Iranian Canadians who need access to consular services in Canada and because the best way for Canadian diplomats to understand Iran is by being there, he says. He also thinks the image of Iranians lining up outside the Canadian embassy to get a visa will demonstrate to Iranian authorities exactly what Iranian citizens think of their government.

Maryam Malekpour, Saeed’s sister who now lives in Edmonton, is conflicted. Her brother was not released during the Harper government’s period of open hostility toward Iran, and she wants to believe a new approach could help Saeed. But she fears he may be forgotten.

In emails to Trudeau and Dion, she urged Canada to place human rights, and especially the rights of Canada-linked prisoners such as Saeed, as the forefront of any talks with Iran.

“What he has gone through in Iran is an insult to any Canadian’s sense of justice,” she wrote, speaking of her brother. 

“Opening up relations with the government of Iran while Saeed remains in prison would place Canadian values at stake.”  

Stéphane Dion responded to Malekpour with a personal letter. He said Saeed’s case is “of concern” but added there is little Canada can do for him because he is not a Canadian citizen. Then he wrote about re-engagement in the broader context of human rights in Iran.

“Canada,” he said, “remains concerned with Iran’s human rights record and will use its re-engagement with Iran as a tool to support efforts to advance human rights.”

That Canada’s re-engagement with Iran will benefit human rights in the country is an argument the Liberals have often deployed, but Dion has offered few details. In an email interview, his spokesperson Chantal Gagnon said the international community must pressure Iran. “However the only way to maintain that pressure is with a strategy of engagement,” she said.  

Peter Kent, the Conservatives’ critic for foreign affairs, thinks this is naïve. “I simply think that so many of Mr. Dion’s positions on reconciliation with leaders and regimes which by their continued behavior show little likelihood of reforming is unrealistic,” he says.

“I still believe we should isolate Iran, I believe at all costs, given all their sins and their unwillingness to even suggest that they will reform their ways. I favour continued isolation until they do.”

Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa who previously worked as a Middle East analyst for the Department of National Defence, also doubts the potential efficacy of Canadian pressure. 

“We’re not going to have any impact whatsoever on the human rights situation in Iran, on Iran’s regional policies,” he says. “That’s the Liberal side of posturing for domestic political purposes.”

Kaveh Shahrooz, an Iranian-Canadian human rights activist who narrowly lost a nomination contest to represent the Liberals in the last federal election, is similarly skeptical. Kazemi, he points out, was murdered when Canada had an ambassador in Tehran.

“While we were there, we weren’t able to even save our own citizen from horrendous torture and rape and murder, so I’m not sure what we’re going to be doing with respect to helping the Iranian people by having a presence there when we can’t even protect our own,” he says.

“The simple matter is that when we had perfectly good relations with Iran, the situation for Iranians was pretty dire, and our relations with Iran certainly didn’t help with respect to Iranian Canadians. I fail to understand this talking point that the government has put out.”

But Bahari, imprisoned and released before relations between Canada and Iran were cut, cautions against assuming Canadian diplomats have been unable to help all Canadians detained in Iran. While he attributes his release in large part to a public campaign waged on his behalf—Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, and then-NDP leader Jack Layton both spoke publicly about his case—he says Canadian diplomats likely played a behind-the-scenes role as well.

“I think the Canadian diplomats who were in Iran, their voices were heard by the Iranian government much more than the Canadian diplomats outside Iran,” he says. 

“When diplomats are based in a country, they have more leverage because they have more access to people within the judiciary, people within the Interior Ministry, people within the security services, and they can talk with them directly.”

Canada lacks such access now. But in the prospect of restoring diplomatic relations, Canada does have what Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University, described in testimony to a House of Commons committee this spring as “a bargaining chip” it should not spend cheaply. 

“The ruling elite [of Iran] have a special interest in having access to Canada because they have invested a lot of their money there, their children study there, and their families have migrated to cities like Toronto and Vancouver,” Akhavan said in a subsequent interview.

This gives Canada an advantage, Akhavan says, which Ottawa should exploit by demanding the release of Malekpour and Hoodfar as part of a broader range of concessions from Iran on human rights.

The idea resonates with Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal minister of justice and a long-time advocate for international human rights—particularly in Iran. “If that were not to be done, then I would wonder why we would engage in diplomatic relations,” he says.

Cotler says he recently met with Dion to discuss Hoodfar and Malekpour. “He said,‘Irwin, we’re doing all we can with regard to Homa Hoodfar, but you know we’re limited because we don’t have diplomatic relations and have to operate through third countries.’

“I can understand that limitation. But I’m saying if we’re going to re-engage, we shouldn’t be thereby limited, or limiting ourselves. We will have to re-engage with all the seriousness that that commands in terms of the intensification of our advocacy, particularly on the human rights front.”

Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, an Iranian-Canadian activist who campaigns on Saeed Malekpour’s behalf, says the release of Malekpour and Hoodfar is the least Canada should secure as part of negotiations over restoring ties. Freeing them, she says, will be much more difficult once negotiations are concluded.

“The fact that they arrested Homa Hoodfar just shows how much they already don’t take the Canadian government seriously. So if the Canadian government is just going to bow down to the Iranian regime and give them something without having them do the bare minimum, which is release the Canada-linked prisoners … I don’t see why this captor would later on release them.”

Nayeb Yazdi, however, worries that Malekpour’s freedom is not a priority for the Canadian government.

“I feel like there’s this internal conflict between the Liberal and Conservatives, and this case is stuck in the middle.”

Hoodfar and Malekpour are unique only because of their links to Canada. Iran’s prisons are full of innocents—political dissidents, journalists, members of the Baha’i religious minority and those who have simply fallen afoul of a dictatorship with a deeply flawed and illiberal justice system.

Akhavan says the human rights situation in Iran has remained the same or worsened since the election of the comparatively moderate Hassan Rouhani as president in 2013, and last year’s deal on Iran’s nuclear program. (The agreement, reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union, lifts some international sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran limiting aspects of its nuclear program.)

“The nuclear deal gave people hope for greater openness, but the regime wants to make it clear that pragmatic concessions on the foreign policy front are not an invitation for internal reform,” Akhavan said in an email interview.

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center says 966 people were executed in Iran last year, compared to 518 killed in 2012, the last full year of Ahmadinejad’s presidency. Canada’s goals regarding how it might influence human rights in Iran must therefore extend beyond the fates of Hoodfar and Malekpour, says Akhavan.

In his testimony to the House of Commons committee, Akhavan described Baha’is in Iran as the regime’s “scapegoat of choice” and said how they are treated is a “litmus test” for the broader state of human rights in the country. 

The Baha’i faith is a monotheistic religion with roots in 19th-century Persia. Baha’is in Iran, who number some 350,000, are persecuted and marginalized—barred from attending university or holding government jobs.

“In these circumstances, if Iran wants diplomatic relations, could Canada call for the release of the seven Baha’i leaders as a gesture of goodwill?” Akhavan told the committee, referring to men and women who have been jailed since 2008 on charges of espionage for Israel, “insulting religious sanctities,” and “propaganda against the system.”

Several persecuted Iranian Baha’is have ties to Canada. Shakib Nasrullah returned to Iran after completing a Master’s degree in counselling psychology at McGill. Because he is Baha’i, Nasrullah could not obtain a job through official channels, but a sympathetic friend gave him one in a clinic. When Iranian authorities found out, Nasrullah was arrested and taken to Evin.