Several Canadian pro-Palestinian youth organizations are coordinating a “Hands Off Iran” rally this weekend outside the American consulate in Toronto — to protest Israel’s targeted attack against the authoritarian regime’s nuclear and military capabilities. 

An Iranian expatriate, Salman Sima, who was imprisoned and tortured by what he calls “the illegitimate occupier regime in Iran,” says that Canada’s pro-Palestinian activists are throwing their support behind a regime that Canada has designated as a “State Supporter of Terrorism.”

“This is not a pro-Iranian people. This is pro-dictatorship,” Mr. Sima told the Sun.

The Toronto protest, set to take place this weekend, is the latest in a seemingly never-ending barrage of anti-Zionist rallies in Canada’s largest city. It is also among the first since Israel’s attack on Iran that places “imperialist and Zionist domination” as a bigger evil than the Islamic Republic of Iran’s routine and brutal suppression of freedom of expression and human rights violations.

“From the Zionist occupation’s full blockade of the West Bank and starvation and genocide in Gaza, to US claims of nuclear weapons, to Carney’s failure to condemn the aggression, we stand against this coordinated imperialist attack on our region,” an event co-organizer, the Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto, said on Instagram.

“It’s so weird being Iranian right now, scrolling through my feed and seeing all my fellow Iranians praying for freedom, and seeing every white leftist & terror sympathizer praying the oppressor wins … ‘for humanity,’” the attorney Elica Le Bon posted on X. Ms Le Bon is the daughter of Iranian parents who escaped Iran during the 1979 revolution. 

Israel’s attack on Iran, codenamed Operation Rising Lion, has targeted strategic nuclear locations like Natanz and Isfahan, and missile sites. Israel launched the attack after IDF intelligence determined that the regime was “operating to obtain a nuclear weapon.” On Tuesday, the Iranian regime’s official X account released a 15-second video showing a man stroking a miniature nuclear bomb.

The Palestinian Youth Movement on Monday claimed that Israel’s attacks “massacred hundreds of Iranians and assassinated political leaders and scientists.” 

“Yes, my fellow Iranians are dying, unfortunately. But all the blood … in the Middle East, in Iran, in Israel, in Yemen, in Syria [under] Bashar al-Assad, all of them are on the hands of the Islamic Republic ‘in’ Iran,” Mr. Sima told the Sun.

Among those killed during Operation Rising Lion were several of Iran’s top military leaders, many of whom had been internationally condemned as human rights offenders. At least nine Iranian nuclear scientists, all  involved in “The Amad Plan,” Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program, have been killed since the Israeli attacks began. 

Those killed include the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, who the European Union said “bears responsibility for serious human rights violations in Iran.” 

In 202, protests broke out in the Islamic Republic after Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for not “properly” wearing her hijab. She would later die in custody. Salami’s Revolutionary Guard used lethal force to suppress the protests, “causing the deaths of and injuries to unarmed protesters and other civilians in many cities across the country,” according to a 2021 Council of the European Union report. More than 450 people were killed, and more than 25,000 were arrested.

In 2022, Salami warned young people not to riot in the streets, saying, “This ominous sedition will bring no happy ending to you. Do not ruin your future!” 

Also killed was the IRGC intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi, who, since taking command in 2022, “has overseen a heightened crackdown on civil society across the country,” the Department of the Treasury said in 2022. Kazemi was among 10 Iranian officials the Treasury office sanctioned for “the brutal ongoing crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran.”

“They received their justice by Israel. It makes me happy. Those people killed my friends. They tortured my people, and I was tortured and starved by the IRGC. They broke two of my ribs,” Mr. Sima told the Sun.

Few people on the pro-Palestinian side in his adoptive home in Canada share Mr. Sima’s sentiments. 

Canada has been a hotbed of antisemitic attacks and anti-Israel protests since the October 7 terrorist attacks. Antisemitic incidents increased by 670 percent in Canada between October 7, 2023, and the end of 2024, according to a report by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism. By October 7, 2024, there were 1,500 pro-Palestinian protests in Toronto alone in just one year.

In 2024, the Toronto police arrested Mr. Sima, who was wrapped in a Canadian flag, for holding a sign reading “Hamas is a Terrorist” during an Al Quds Day rally in the city. 

To counter the rise in anti-Zionist protests, Toronto recently passed a “bubble zone” bylaw that prohibits rallies within 50 metersvof faith-based schools, childcare centers, and places of worship, which the University of Windsor Faculty of Law assistant professor decried as “an example of the lawfare being wielded against pro-Palestinian solidarity and other left movements.”

As for the Hands Off Iran protest, Mr. Sima believes the “brainwashed white privilege” crowd is doing, whether knowingly or unknowingly, the bidding of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Mr. Sima calls “the Supreme loser.” 

It also comes as little surprise to Mr. Sima, as Canada is considered a major safe haven for Iranian money laundering, or “snow washing.” A former Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, dragged his feet on listing the IRGC as a terrorist entity, which Finance Canada officials said allowed the regime’s illegal money laundering, upward of $100 billion, to go undetected.

By 2024, when Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government finally designated the IRGC as a terrorist group, the IRGC had already managed to spread its influence in Canada’s political and social landscape.

“It’s influencing the youth and mobilizing them against Western values, against Canadian security, in very subtle [ways] and sometimes in very overt ways,” a co-founder of StopIRGC, Mojdeh Shahriari, told the National Post.

“This is exactly the result of foreign affairs interference in our streets, foreign affairs interference in our democracy in Canada, and unfortunately, all three levels of government, local, provincial, and federal. They are totally ignorant,” Mr. Sima said.