LONDON: The ties between the United States (US) and UK would have suffered if they (UK) had not fully engaged with the attack of Iraq, former UK prime minister Tony Blair has disclosed. In a new radio series looking back on the invasion of the Middle Eastern country in 2003, Tony Blair spoke about UK’s significance to the United States (US) in the lead-up to the war.
UK-US ties and Iraq war
The then US President George Bush had told Tony Blair that London did not need to take part in the early stages of the war in Iraq out of fear that his partner would lose a vote in Parliament on the night ahead of war, but Toney Blair persisted with the attack, the Daily Telegraph stated.
Blair said he viewed confronting the then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a matter of principle and was sure that their alliance depended on them doing this together.
Former CIA operations officer and head of Iraq operations Luis Rueda was also interviewed for the radio series and confessed that “we were wrong regarding the arms of mass destruction in Iraq”.
Tony Blair said London’s ties with Washington has deteriorated since he was PM. “When I was PM, there was no hesitation either under Clinton or Bush, who the US president picked up the phone to first. “It was the British PM … today we are out of Europe and would US President Joe Biden pick up the phone to Sunak first? I’m not certain,” the former Prime Minister said.
