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And we also know, as much as this may gall us, that there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can do about any of this.

Watching the prime minister speak, hearing him reply to question after question with some variation of “We need to gather more facts,” only served to remind us that, once the facts have been gathered and the questions answered, we’re actually going to have to do something. A position will have to be determined. A policy announced and enacted. And the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes that that’s going to be really, really hard for Canada.

Photo by Dave Chan / AFP

Assume a worst-case scenario: Iran intentionally brought down the plane. (It probably didn’t mean to, but just assume.) That would be an act of war, occurring near simultaneously to the other act of war — the bombing of the base where Canadian troops were stationed. But there will be no war. Canada wouldn’t want a war, and even if we did, we couldn’t mobilize enough firepower and deploy it to wage one anyway. Even if we began arming today, with “Remember 752!” our new national motto, it would take us, what, 15 years to get the planes and ships procured?

So a war is off the table (as it should be, since this was almost certainly a horrific, mortifying, inexcusable accident). That leaves diplomacy. Canada could recall the ambassador and shutter the embass … no, no, wait. We can’t do that either. Canada and Iran broke off diplomatic relations years ago, due to unacceptable Iranian intelligence activity in Canada. There are no ambassadors to recall, no embassies to dramatically close.