Hugh Segal's Big, Fat, Idiotic "Instinct" Tells Him It's Possible To Do Business With Iran

This is from Segal's interview with Paul Lungen in this week's Canadian Jewish News (link not yet available online). Lungen asks, "What should be our policy vis-à-vis Iran?" To which Segal replies:

I don't disagree with the present government view that it's time to talk about re-opening the doors and talking about the relationship.

We have to be able to walk and chew gum here. It's one thing to be able to say good luck on the nuclear thing, let's open up our relations, let's do trade. We have some problems on which we are not going to relent. We're not going to relent on Iranian support of Hamas and Hezbollah, and we're not going to relent on the Revolutionary Guard activities and how they're trying to foster terrorism around the world. We're not going to relent on what appears to be the official anti-Semitism of large parts of the regime. Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have to deal with one set of issues constructively and also make sure constraints are in place and new sanctions, if necessary, deployment, on these other sets of issues.

My instinct is [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau gets the balance and will be looking to find it.

"We have to be able to walk and chew gum here"?

I think not.

I think we have to be able to tell Iran, whose regime is wicked through and through, to kish mir in hinten.

Of course, I didn't use that colourful Yiddish expression (translation, more or less: kiss my buttocks) in this letter to the CJN:

Try as I might, I cannot make sense of Hugh Segal's argument for wanting to restore ties with Iran. On the one hand, Segal wants Canada to pursue business opportunities there. On the other hand, however, he acknowledges that there's an enormous stumbling block: the fact that Iran sponsors such terrorist entities as Hamas and Hezbollah, that its Revolutionary Guard is engaged in deadly activities aimed at keeping the Grand Ayatollah's fanatical theocrats in power, that anti-Semitism is woven into its "revolutionary" doctrine, and, most perturbing of all, that Iran wants to put the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons, one of which could obliterate Israel.

And yet, Segal claims that his "instinct" tells him that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can somehow get "the balance" right; that it is somehow possible, and even desirable, to surmount the stumbling block and do business with a country that pursues such evil goals.

Sorry, Mr. Segal. Something tells me that your "instinct" is out to lunch.