The Canadian government has announced sanctions against "the murderous regime" in Iran and banned 10,000 people linked to the regime from ever going to Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said such sanctions are only imposed in the most serious of circumstances, such as following war crimes committed in Bosnia and Rwanda.
Many of the people banned from entering Canada are members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, IRGC, the elite corps at the service of the Chiite clergy that has ruled the country since 1979. It was established that year as a sort of political stormtrooper unit to overhadow the potentially unreliable army and establish a strict Islamic republic.
Today, the IRGC is not only a military entity, but also an economic elite that is involved in everything and smothers any opposition. The elite corps is estimated to have at least 250,000 members.
There are currently major protests across Iran against the regime, which is struggling, among other things, with deep, protracted economic crises. The death in mid-September of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, after her arrest by the vice squad for violating a dress code, has sparked the latest wave of protests, which have left an estimated 60 persons dead.
Mahsa Amini is said to have died as a result of police abuse, but the Iranian authorities say she succumbed to organ failure related to a brain surgery she underwent at the age of eight.
