UK and US misread the intentions of the Iranian regime

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 | Press Association

Tony Blair "very much exaggerated" Iran's role in supporting al Qaida insurgents in their attacks on British and American forces in Iraq, a former ambassador to Tehran has said.
And Sir Richard Dalton said that the UK and US misread the intentions of the Iranian regime, believing it would inevitably be hostile to their mission in Iraq when in fact Tehran wanted them to succeed in installing a stable government in Baghdad.

Giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry, Sir Richard - Britain's ambassador in Tehran from 2003-06 - said Mr Blair made "a series of very bad decisions" about the legality of the 2003 invasion.
As international pressure continues to ratchet up over Tehran's alleged efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, Sir Richard warned that military action against Iran would be illegal unless there was evidence it posed an "imminent and real" threat to another country.

In his appearance before the inquiry in January, Mr Blair stressed the role of both Iran and al Qaida in destabilising Iraq and making the task of rebuilding the country following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein more difficult.

"What nobody foresaw was that Iran would actually end up supporting al Qaida," the former Prime Minister told inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot. "What happened in the end was that they did because they both had a common interest in destabilising the country, and for Iran I think the reason they were interested in destabilising Iraq was because they worried about having a functioning majority Shia country with a democracy on their doorstep."

But Sir Richard told the inquiry: "From what I saw of his evidence, I thought he very much exaggerated this factor."

Iranian help to al Qaida was in fact limited to permitting fighters to pass across its territory from Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Sir Richard. His assessment was that Tehran had no interest in promoting "anarchy" in Iraq, but wanted an inclusive Iraqi-run government capable of acting as a source of stability in the region.

"Their objective was never to destabilise Iraq to the point at which the whole enterprise would fail," said Sir Richard. "They feared anarchy and they feared that if the handover to Iraqi politicians was to fail completely, that would be the worst possible situation for Iran, because that would allow the Americans an excuse to stay very much longer. They were seeking to hurt the coalition without preventing the takeover of Iraq by an Iraqi regime that would be successful."
He added: "I also felt at the time of Mr Blair's testimony to you that he was seeking to cast a retrospectively benign light on a series of very bad decisions taken about the legality of an attack on Iraq by saying it was not only right to do it, but we might have to do it again."