When Canada closed its embassy in Iran two years ago, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government cited safety fears.

“The Iranian regime has shown a blatant disregard for the Vienna Convention and its guarantees of protection for diplomatic personnel,” Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said then.

Coming less than a year after a mob set fire to Britain’s embassy in Tehran, this explanation made some sense. Iran is also the country that famously allowed students to hold U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979.

But news this week casts serious doubt on Canada’s official rationale. An internal foreign affairs report aired on CBC reveals that nine months before the embassy shutdown, Canadian diplomats in Tehran weren’t much concerned about rioting mobs.

The report, which CBC says it obtained under access-to-information laws, concluded that the biggest security threat facing Canada’s embassy in Tehran was the possibility of an earthquake.

Regime-incited violence directed against Canadians was thought to be unlikely, the report said, noting that an earlier decision by Ottawa to impose economic sanctions on Iran had provoked no reaction.

The report said Iranian officials were respectful of Canadian diplomats and wanted them to stay.

Yet the Canadian government forged ahead anyway. Ottawa closed its Tehran embassy and, at the same time, expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada.

“Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” Baird said.

That was two years ago. Since that time, the Conservative government has discovered more enemies.

One is Russia. According to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Russia under Vladimir Putin “represents a significant threat to the peace and security of the world.” Baird has compared Putin’s Russia to Hitler’s Germany.

Another is the Islamic State. Defence Minister Rob Nicholson calls these militants “a real and growing threat to civilization itself.” Baird calls the war against Islamic State the “greatest struggle of our generation.”

The Harper government doesn’t talk much about Iran any more. But it refuses to back down from its take-no-prisoners approach.

Others are more flexible. The British quietly reopened their embassy in Tehran this year. Westminster realizes that Shiite Iran can be a useful, if silent partner, in the war against Sunni militants of the Islamic State.

So, too, the Americans. U.S. President Barack Obama is desperate for a face-saving compromise on Iranian nuclear ambitions that can allow him to focus on the war in Iraq and Syria.

Reports Wednesday that Iran has launched its own air strikes against Islamic State targets won praise from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who lauded any such action as “positive.”

From Canada there has been nothing.

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Exactly why Ottawa persists in its hard line against Iran is complicated.

In part, it stems from Harper’s decision to hew to the Israeli government line in Middle Eastern affairs. Israel does feel threatened by Iran.

In part, it stems from Canada’s irrelevance. We are not a major player in the Middle East. Our economic boycott of Iran is largely meaningless. In such a situation, tough rhetoric is costless.

But in part it stems from the Harper government’s political needs.

This is a government that needs foreign enemies. Enemies allow a shopworn prime minister to reinvent himself as a strong and vigorous international statesman.

For a while, Ottawa’s foreign enemies list focused on American “socialist billionaires” trying to stymie oil pipelines in Canada.

But the government has come to realize that more exotic foreigners make better foes. Baird understood this when he fingered Iran as public enemy number one. Harper understood it when he upbraided Putin in Australia last month.

For a tired government seeking re-election, foreign threats don’t have to be real to be useful. In fact it’s arguably better if they are imaginary. Imaginary threats cost little in either lives or money.

What they do, however, is send a message to voters:

Stick with the proven leader. Stick with the guy who isn’t afraid to take on the world.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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