MELBOURNE: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he regretted the Iran war was an extreme example of a rupturing world order in which countries increasingly act without respect for international norms and laws.
Carney was speaking at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based international policy think tank, during the Australian leg of a trade-focused, three-nation visit that began in India. He will address the Australian Parliament on Thursday before flying to Japan on Friday.
“Geo-strategically, hegemons are increasingly acting without constraint or respect for international norms or laws while others bear the consequences. Now the extremes of this disruption are being played out in real time in the Middle East,” Carney said.
Carney built on themes that he laid out at the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, Switzerland, in a speech that garnered widespread attention. He argued the world order was undergoing a rupture and the old norms of the rules-based order were being erased.
Canada supported efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and from threatening international peace and security, Carney said.
“We are actively taking on the world as it is, not passively waiting for a world we wish to be. But we also take this position with some regret because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order,” he said.
Despite decades of UN efforts, “Iran’s nuclear threat remains and now the United States and Israel have acted without engaging the UN or consulting with allies including Canada,” he added.
Whether the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran broke international law was “a judgment for others to make,” he said.
Canada and Australia aim to increase cooperation in critical minerals, AI and defense technologies.