Iranian sleeper cells may be targeting opponents on Canadian soil

OTTAWA, Canada – While Iran’s retaliatory military attacks against Israel have ended, the Canadian government department responsible for national security is monitoring “the residual impact of the evolving situation in the Middle East,” according to a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada.

“Canada’s law enforcement agencies remain on alert,” Noémie Allard said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital in which she indicated that the current national terrorism threat level in Canada is “medium, meaning that a violent extremist attack is a realistic possibility at this time.”

Meanwhile, Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and attorney general and human-rights advocate who has been targeted by the Iranian regime told Fox News Digital in an interview that the Islamic Republic is intensifying its campaign of “massive domestic oppression” against its opponents at home and could embark on “transnational repression” against its opponents abroad.

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A longtime critic of the Iranian clerical regime, Cotler has been under round-the-clock Royal Canadian Mounted Police protection since 2023 when Canadian intelligence officials identified a death threat against him from Iran.

“Iranian diaspora groups, human rights defenders, journalists, Jews and Israelis have all become potential targets,” Cotler told Fox News Digital in an interview. “This is a moment in which we need to be on alert.”

He noted that this week, three political prisoners were executed in Iran over charges of espionage for Israel, and during the 12-day war with Israel, another 700 Iranians were arrested under allegations that they collaborated with Israel.

Montreal-born Cotler, an 85-year-old international human rights lawyer who established the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights 10 years ago, is trying to secure the release of Ahmadreza Djalali – a Swedish Iranian physician accused of being an Israeli spy, who had been imprisoned for nine years at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison in Tehran until this week when he was moved to an undisclosed location. He is facing what Cotler described as “an imminent threat of execution.”

He fears that sleeper cells have been activated in Canada to target those who oppose the Iranian regime and is urging the Canadian government to prioritize the establishment of an independent agency to address external threats of repression and assassination from such rogue countries as Iran, China and Russia.

Cotler also noted that Iranian-born Canadian human rights lawyer Kaveh Shahrooz, who he said has also been targeted by the Iranian regime, believes the number of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents operating in Canada are “underrepresented” and “that the threat is greater than we appreciate.”

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Fox News Digital was unable to reach Shahrooz for further comment.

Canada should also follow the lead of the U.S. Justice Department and prosecute those who collaborate with Iranian-led sleeper cells, said Cotler, who in 2008 called for the IRGC to be listed as a terrorist entity – a designation that Canada finally adopted in 2024.

Last October, the Justice Department formally accused Ruhollah Bazghandi, a senior IRGC official, of involvement in a 2022 plot to kill Iranian American dissident Masih Alinejad – a friend of Cotler’s – in New York City.

During a virtual news conference from the NATO summit at The Hague on Tuesday, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said that her government is “very concerned about [both] foreign interference, including the types that were highlighted by” Cotler and “about the Iranian regime,” which is why she said that Canada declared it to be a “terrorist entity” in 2022 and has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 2012.

Anand also said that she had a call with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last Saturday before the U.S. airstrikes against Iran, during which she reaffirmed Canada’s continuing desire to seek accountability from the Islamic Republic for the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 in 2020, which resulted in the deaths of 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

Cotler said that the victims’ families in both Iran and Canada have been “harassed and threatened” since the air tragedy.

On Wednesday, The Globe and Mail reported that the Canada Border Services Agency had identified 20 people deemed inadmissible because they are believed to be senior Iranian officials.