In January, as authorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran systematically gunned down thousands of protesters during a nationwide uprising, Canadian officials condemned the bloodshed and called for comprehensive political change to free the Iranian people from decades of tyranny. Yet as the massacre receded from the international community’s attention, Ottawa grew conspicuously quiet about the regime’s broader and enduring pattern of human rights abuses.

That silence would be shameful under any circumstances. It is all the more indefensible because the repression did not end when the demonstrations disappeared from the headlines. Since March alone, the regime has executed more than 40 people on political grounds, some as young as 19. Dozens of others are already on death row, and still more could join them unless sustained international pressure forces Tehran to halt, or at least curtail, its killing spree.

Canada should therefore be consistent in the message it sends to governments and institutions capable of influencing Tehran—or of joining a multilateral campaign against the regime through economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, referrals to international courts, and other measures. Every Western government should be expected to deliver the same unambiguous message: Political executions and the violent suppression of dissent cannot be allowed to proceed without consequences.

That obligation has acquired new urgency amid speculation that Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution, is planning to visit Canada in mid-September. If prominent politicians or institutions give Pahlavi a platform from which to promote himself as the natural successor to the mullahs, Canada risks disrespecting the sacrifices of activists who have struggled for freedom and democracy since long before the Islamic Republic came into being.

Opposition to the Islamic Republic does not require nostalgia for the monarchy it replaced. The theocracy’s machinery of execution, torture, and political intimidation did not emerge from a historical vacuum. It inherited methods of repression familiar from the reign of the shah, who ruled Iran through a one-party system and the notorious secret police force known as SAVAK. A country does not escape authoritarianism merely by changing its symbols, slogans, or ruling family.

Throughout his current international campaign, Pahlavi has remained deliberately evasive about his father’s legacy and what it might mean for the role he seeks in Iran’s future. The relevant choice is not simply between theocratic dictatorship and the restoration of the shah’s throne. It is between authoritarian rule in any form and a democratic order shaped by Iranians themselves. Yet Pahlavi has used meetings with Western politicians to lend legitimacy to his political ambitions while declining to confront the record that shadows them.

He has repeatedly refused to disavow the political executions and violent repression that were pervasive before the revolution. Instead, he has expressed pride in his father’s record and in his royal heritage. This posture treats the shah’s human rights record as if it could be edited out of Iran’s modern history. It cannot. Political prisoners were systematically tortured, opponents were silenced through fear, and the state treated dissent as a crime. Many of the people who endured that repression are still alive; a significant number of them now live in Canada.

Canadians rightly take pride in a public commitment to human rights and human dignity. Those principles are not ornamental. They are supposed to guide the country’s conduct, particularly when political convenience makes consistency difficult. Canada must not become a stage on which authoritarian rule—whether past or present—is sanitized, repackaged, and sold as liberation.

Ottawa should lead in condemning Iran’s current wave of political executions, unequivocally and vociferously. At the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting in late September, Canada should address Iran’s wider human rights catastrophe and draw particular attention to the use of executions as an instrument of political control. It should also resist the temptation to anoint favored personalities or factions as the answer to Iran’s future. That means keeping an appropriate distance from figures such as Pahlavi, whose democratic credentials remain entangled with an authoritarian inheritance he will not honestly reckon with.

Canada should instead make clear that it stands with Iranians who have suffered under two successive dictatorships. This is a vital test at a historic moment. Repeated uprisings, together with persistent acts of protest and civil disobedience, have shown that the Iranian people are calling for international solidarity while remaining determined to decide their country’s future for themselves. That future should not be imposed by clerics, heirs, foreign governments, or political branding campaigns conducted abroad.

Standing with Iran means standing for freedom, justice, accountability, and self-determination—not for any past or present machinery of repression. Canada can honor those principles only by opposing authoritarianism consistently, regardless of the uniform it wears or the dynasty, ideology, or religious doctrine invoked to justify it.