Mourners carry the coffin of Hezbollah fighter Amin Hassan Badreddine, during his funeral service on August 07, 2024 in Beirut Lebanon.Chris McGrath/Getty Images
The Canadian Armed Forces are positioning staff and equipment in the Mediterranean in the event of an evacuation mission as fear of an all-out regional war in the Middle East grows.
The federal government has for months urged Canadians in Lebanon to leave the country. Those calls have become more urgent after two high-profile assassinations last week, for which Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have vowed retaliation against Israel.
An Israeli strike on July 30 in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, as well as an Iranian military adviser and five civilians. Coupled with the killing in Tehran hours later of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the strike has risked sparking a regional war. The Canadian government has designated Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups.
The Israeli government has said that it would respond to any attack from Iran or Hezbollah, potentially putting Lebanon in its crosshairs.
The Iranian government further raised concerns Wednesday, issuing a warning to civilian airlines around the world to avoid flying through its air space owing to military exercises on Wednesday and Thursday.
While Ottawa has not yet said it would conduct an evacuation mission should Canadians become stranded in Lebanon, plans for one are moving ahead.
The Forces are in the process of positioning assets in the eastern Mediterranean region to be ready to assist the Global Affairs Department with planning and logistics should the federal government green-light an evacuation operation for Canadians in Lebanon, the Defence Department said in a Wednesday statement.
“The forward positioning of assets is part of standard CAF preparatory activities that support planning and liaison activities with other government departments and agencies, as well as information sharing between allies to ensure optimal situational awareness in the region.”
The department did not immediately clarify what assets it is putting in place. The 2006 evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon was done by air and sea.
Despite the current planning, “there is never a guarantee the Canadian government will evacuate Canadians in a crisis situation,” said Defence spokesperson Andrée-Anne Poulin in a subsequent statement.
Canada and its allies helped evacuate stranded citizens in Israel by air in the wake of the Hamas attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7. Since then planning for an evacuation from Lebanon has also been in the works amid concerns of a regional war.
In the fall, Canadian officials said the Canadian Forces were working on contingency plans with allies in the event that Canadians, permanent residents and their families need to be evacuated from Lebanon. That included setting up a “multinational non-combatant evacuation operations co-ordination centre” in Cyprus.
Last week, National Defence Department spokesperson Alexandre Tétreault said the Canadian Forces are in Cyprus right now to help the Canadian embassy in Lebanon with contingency planning.
He said approximately 30 CAF personnel are part of an Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance Team in Cyprus and “other key locations.”
As Western allies prepare for a possible evacuation mission, there are also intense diplomatic efforts under way to try to de-escalate the situation. On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said that he spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and urged him to do “everything in his power to avoid a new military escalation.”
The French President also spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this week.
U.S. President Joe Biden has also been calling leaders in the region, speaking on Tuesday with his counterparts in Egypt and Qatar to discuss de-escalation efforts.
Lebanon sits on the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Israel to its south and Syria to its north and east. Nearly 22,000 Canadians have registered their presence in Lebanon with the Department of Global Affairs, the government said last week, but that doesn’t capture everyone there.
The Global Affairs Department estimates that between 40,000 and 75,000 Canadians live in Lebanon.
The federal government’s website is urging Canadians in Lebanon to leave now, and notes that advice has been in place since October, 2023. Leaving is becoming increasingly difficult as some airlines have already suspended service from Beirut, but the government warns that an exit will become even more challenging with more flight cancellations and airspace closings expected.
“You should not rely on the Government of Canada for assisted departure or evacuation,” the website says.
Lebanon was the centre of Canada’s largest ever evacuation mission in 2006 when the government spent $100-million evacuating 14,000 citizens from the country. That mission was conducted amid all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which killed around 1,300 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis.
With reports from Associated Press