On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau’s government announced its decision to back a resolution under discussion in the Canadian parliament that calls for the immediate cessation of “any and all negotiation or discussions” with Tehran, designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity, and condemns Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s calls for the genocide of the Jews. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

[Trudeau’s] support for the resolution marked a striking about-face. Trudeau had campaigned for restoring Ottawa’s ties with Tehran, severed in 2012 by the previous, Conservative government. . . .

It turns out that even the Trudeau-led Canadian Liberals have their limits when it comes to dealing with the Islamic Republic. As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, Ottawa dispatched two diplomatic missions in 2017 to explore a rapprochement. But there were two stumbling blocks. The Iranians insisted that their country should be removed from Canada’s list of terror-sponsoring nations, and the Canadians were determined to free various hostages held by the regime. The Iranians were apparently immovable on the matter of the hostages and the Canadians were, in turn, unwilling to deny the basic truth about Iran’s role in sponsoring international terror.

Passage of the resolution doesn’t mean Canada is rethinking its support for Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. But it underscores Iran’s growing isolation as a new generation of Western leaders comes to learn that there are no “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran—only tyrants and terrorists.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.