Canada will move on Monday to impose new unilateral sanctions against Iran as it joins a Western campaign to increase pressure on Tehran to drop a nuclear-weapons program.
The new measures, to be announced by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, will go beyond the international sanctions mandated by the United Nations as Canada joins Western allies in getting tougher on Iran.
The measures will include a ban on any new Canadian investment in Iran's oil and gas sector, and restrictions on exporting goods that could be used in nuclear programs, including non-nuclear material that could be used in nuclear research and development.
In addition, Iranian banks will be barred from opening branches in Canada and Canadian banks will not be able to set up operations in Iran.
Canada has been one of Iran's most vocal critics, leading UN campaigns for resolutions attacking Tehran's human-rights records, and accusing the country of being a scofflaw for evading nuclear inspectors and launching plans for enriching uranium to weapons-grade.
"The sanctions are intended to send a message to all states, particularly those with nuclear aspirations, that international standards cannot be flouted without consequence," a government source said.
Canada's commercial ties to Iran are not so vast that Ottawa's sanctions will be a deep blow to Tehran. But the United States has already imposed unilateral sanctions, and the new Canadian measures are intended to be part of increasing Western pressure.
The European Union is expected to hit Iran on Monday with a new round of sanctions to curb oil investment and cut-off "dual-use" goods that could be employed by the nuclear industry. Canada's sanctions will be similar to the EU measures, the government source said.
Australia and Japan are expected to follow suit.
The measure catching Tehran's attention is a proposed ban on investment in Iran's oil sector. Although the country is the world's fourth-largest producer of crude oil, it has to import fuel because it lacks refining capacity and seeks investment to build the sector's infrastructure.
Iran's government, knowing the new EU sanctions are coming, responded with both combative warnings and offers to talk.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Iranian TV on Sunday that countries that impose sanctions would be considered hostile, and that Tehran's response "will cause you to regret it."
But Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Agence France-Presse on Sunday the country is willing to hold talks with Western nations about a nuclear-fuel swap it signed in May. Under that deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil, Iran would send low-enriched uranium to Turkey and get highly enriched fuel from Russia or France in return. But at the time, Western countries dismissed the deal as little more than a diversionary tactic.
Canada imposed a new round of UN sanctions on Iran in June, but get-tough allies in North America and Europe have found their desire to impose harsher restrictions limited by the reluctance of Russia and especially China.
Those two countries hold vetoes in the United Nations Security Council, which decides on sanctions, and are also Iran's largest trading partners. Their acceptance of new sanctions was considered a step forward by Western nations, but the tradeoff for their acquiescence was a limited package of measures.
The efforts to impose tough sanctions are, for Western allies, an attempt to hold off a more dramatic outcome: It is widely feared that Israel would launch air strikes if it felt Iran is on the verge of obtaining nuclear-armed missiles, and the United States might feel forced to join the conflict.
Campbell Clark