Pierre Poilievre: Evidence Shows The Downing Of Flight PS752 Was A “Willful Act Of Terrorism” By The IRGC

On May 2, 2022, Pierre Poilievre held a press conference alongside Iranian-Canadian human rights activists and families of the victims of flight PS752, to talk about the Trudeau government’s failure to hold the Regime in Iran to account for shooting down the airplane carrying 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

On January 8, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired two missiles at Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 killing all 176 passengers aboard. The plane took off from Iran’s capital Tehran and was supposed to go to Kyiv.

Right after the regime killed 176 people, Justin Trudeau set the standard that the families of the victims would come to expect when he met with Iran’s chief international propagandist Javid Zariff, shook his hand and even bowed down to him.

Shahin Moghaddam, whose wife Shakiba and son Rosstin were murdered by the IRCG as well as Mehrzad Zarei, who lost his son Arad when the IRCG shot down PS752, were both there to speak at the press conference. Both have lost faith in the Trudeau government’s promises for justice and insisted that all they have gotten from the Liberals is empty words.

It is actually worse than that since the families of the victims are looking to seize the assets of the Regime here in Canada to be paid out as restitution based on an Ontario Superiour court ruling that determined the PS752 downing to be a terrorist act, the Trudeau government used its resource to intercede on behalf of the IRCG in a Canadian court. 

The Trudeau government seems content to play along with the farce of an investigation that the Iranian regime conducted on itself concluding “systems failure” led to the downing of PS752. Poilievre’s take is a strong rebuke of the Liberal’s position.

When I asked Pierre Poilievre directly, considering all the evidence surrounding the PS752 case would he reject the notion it was a “systems failure”, but instead a willful act of terrorism committed by the IRGC he agreed stating that “the evidence points to a willful act of terrorism by the IRGC”.

Poilievre’s position is a common-sense position to anyone familiar with the facts of the case. The missile system used to shoot down the plane was an SA-15/Tor B2 system which requires an entire command team to operate, and the plane took off from Theran, the highly populated capital city of Iran. A bit of background in the week leading up to the PS752 downing the IRGC had instigated an assault on the American embassy in Iraq, in response, Trump took out the IRGC’s commander Qassem Solemani leading to Iran shelling an American base.

To believe the Iranian’s story, as Trudeau does, you have to believe a series of nearly impossible coincidences and errors leading to PS752. After shelling an American base Iran would have been on high alert for an attack. While on high alert they chose to not ground civilian aircraft. After not grounding civilian aircraft they had their missile defence system set to automatic over their capital city. After PS752 took off, all of the dozens of military personnel operating the air-defence system took a simultaneous coffee break (during high alert). Once the target locked, no one got back in time to stop the missile. After a missile is fired there are massive warnings that would have alerted everyone in command, which means they saw the first miss fire and then somehow “accidentally” fired a second missile at a civilian aircraft. 

Claiming to believe all of that, as the Trudeau government does, not only insults the intelligence of every single Canadian but is a slap in the face to the families of the victims of this intentional terrorist attack.

Also speaking at this press conference were Dr. Avideh Motmaenfar of the Council of Iranian Canadians (CIC) and Ardeshir Zarezadeh, Director of the International Center for Human Rights (ICHR) who outlined a series of actions the Canadian government should take against the IRGC and the regime members living in Canada on the ill-gotten gains pillaged from regular Iranians.

Poilievre to a very strong public stance siding with the Iranian community and the families of the victims promising to be hard on the regime, declare the entire IRGC a terrorist organization, institute Magnitsky sanctions on human rights abusers, seize regime assets in Canada to give to their victims among other promises.

Pierre Poilievre’s hardline stance against terrorist regimes and their proxies will draw shape contrast against Trudeau’s much more lenient approach to terrorism. Not every member of the CPC leadership race is following this formula as Patrick Brown recently took a much more pro-Hezbollah stance on foreign policy.

Poilievre has made the important first move, setting the standard in the party’s stance on the PS752 incident. Will other candidates fall in line with Poilievre, or will they take the Patrick Brown route and try and fill the membership up with those with more sympathetic views towards the IRGC?