March 13, 2026  ·  Kingston, Ontario

On the first of March, 2026, an Iranian ballistic missile struck Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Canadian Armed Forces personnel were stationed there.¹ Satellite imagery analyzed by the Montreal newspaper La Presse and published eleven days later showed the Canadian section of the base appeared to have been damaged.² No Canadians were killed or injured. The Canadian government did not say a word.

The strike occurred in the opening days of the Iran war, which began February 28 when the United States and Israel launched coordinated air strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and targeting Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. Iran responded with waves of missiles and drones directed at U.S. bases and Gulf states, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE.¹⁶

When the war broke out, as many as eighteen members of the Canadian military were on exchange with U.S. forces at two facilities: the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.¹⁵ Retired Major-General Denis Thompson told CBC News that those Canadians, embedded in the Combined Aerospace Operations Centre, were likely involved in planning and targeting. The Department of National Defence has denied this.¹⁷ Former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy put the contradiction plainly: "You cannot embed Canadian officers in U.S. war-fighting headquarters, plug Canadian intelligence into targeting processes, then wash your hands when missiles fly."¹⁸

The Canadian Press filed a question to the Department of National Defence on March 6 asking about the reported airstrike on the Kuwait base. DND took a week to respond.³ When the Liberal government called a take-note debate in Parliament on the Iran war (held Monday, March 9) it made no mention of any attack or damage to the Canadian section at Ali Al-Salem.²⁰

La Presse published its satellite analysis Thursday, March 12. Conservative defence critic James Bezan responded the same afternoon, calling the government's silence "really shameful." He noted that Canada's allies, including the United States, had been holding daily briefings and discussing base damage openly. "This government has been too secretive," Bezan said.¹⁴

When reporters asked Prime Minister Mark Carney Thursday whether he could confirm the strikes and explain why Canadians had not been informed, he said members of the Canadian Forces in the region are "all safe and sound."²¹ He did not acknowledge the eleven-day gap, nor did he explain the government's decision not to raise the matter during the Parliamentary debate on the very war in which the incident occurred.

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong characterized the government's overall Iran posture as "utterly incoherent."⁴ The record bears that assessment out. In a span of twelve days, the Prime Minister praised the U.S. strikes, then criticized them as a failure of international order, then declined to rule out Canadian participation, then ruled it out categorically. All of this occurred while a Canadian base section sat damaged in Kuwait and Parliament was kept in the dark.

No Canadians died. That, in itself, is a miracle in every capacity. But the question the Carney government has not answered is a straightforward one: when Canadian military infrastructure is struck in a foreign war, at what point does the government believe Canadians are entitled to know?

_{The Canadian Loyalist is an independent, conservative publication. This article is based on reporting from CBC News, La Presse, The Canadian Press, and official government statements. All facts are drawn from publicly available sources.}

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