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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We just hear from the former Prime Minister, Tony  Blair but just how much of what we are seeing in Iraq today is the legacy of intervention over a decade ago?  Or, as Mr Blair argues, is it the predictable result of a lack of action in Syria?  Well in a moment I’ll speak to the Conservative MP and former Middle East Minister, Alistair Burt but first I’m joined by Clare Short, the former Labour MP who you’ll remember resigned from her post as International Development Secretary over the Iraq war.  Do you share  any of Tony Blair’s analysis – we know about your disagreements with him about going to war in Iraq – his analysis boils down to that it is lack of intervention rather than too much of it that’s causing these problems.  

CLARE SHORT: Yes, I’m afraid he is absolutely consistently wrong, wrong, wrong and of course he has become a complete American neo-con who thinks military action, bombing, attacking will solve the problems when it is actually making more and more tension, anger, division, bitterness in the Middle East.  The truth is it’s not only Iraq that is absolutely the touchstone that’s throw all the Middle East into chaos, the deceit about why to go – it wasn’t he said about getting rid of Saddam Hussein, it was about WMD and Saddam Hussein could stay if he didn’t have them.  Now it’s all about getting rid of Saddam Hussein but it was done in such a deceitful way with a lack of proper preparation for afterwards that we got chaos, we got the total destruction of the Ba’athist party so the whole of the Sunni community alienated and there were state department people in the US saying that would be a big error.  Malaki is very sectarian and very corrupt, the army doesn’t work, it’s not just ISIS but this is also supported by the disgruntled Sunni people and then similarly in Syria, Western policy has been more interested in getting rid of Assad than helping the people of Syria get the democracy that they rose up peacefully to get so arms are coming in from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to the opposition and the nasty Al Qaeda type of ideas, the distorted ideas of Islam, come out of Saudi Arabia, the big friend of the West and the big friend of Blair.  Then we’ve got Israel/Palestine and the unbearable suffering of the Palestinian people and the endless breaches of international law by Israel propped up by the US and so on and it’s just a recipe for further explosions.  So just more bombing will not solve it, it will just exacerbate it. 

DM: What do you think of Mr Blair’s Syrian analysis?  He talks about taking these principled and strong positions but his analysis goes well we were wrong not to get rid of President Assad, wrong not to use military force with his use of chemical weapons but now he’s still there we might have to come to an accommodation with the people surrounding Assad and he might have to stay in the short term. 

CLARE SHORT: You see people call for military action like they call for it in Iraq.  Who are you going to bomb in a society?  Remember Northern Ireland, when there is an uprising backed by some of the people, if you bomb you kill some of the people and make the people more angry and strengthen the forces of opposition.  Actually I agree we have been wrong in Syria but we have been wrong by wanting to get rid of Assad rather than help the people of Syria and that’s because we are focused on being hostile to Iran.  The truth is, we won’t get any solutions in Iraq or Syria without being allies of Iran and Iran indeed has offered help because of course these extreme forces hate the Shia and are killing them which is why the Shia of Iraq are now rallying.  Remember Kofi Annan was the first Special Representative to Syria, he said stop arming both sides, have a transitional government which would have included Assad for a time and let the people of Syria have their own government.  Instead we thought we can get rid of him, let’s let the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia arm the opposition and we’ve ended up with the chaos and mess of Syria and their solutions would just make it all worse for everybody. 

DM: Clare Short, thank you very much indeed.  Let’s get the views now of Alistair Burt, the former Middle East Minister.  Do you go along with any of that, Mr Burt, that in fact it is at the core of it botched interventions in some many areas within the Middle East that’s causing these problems?

ALISTAIR BURT: I think there is a great dancer of trying to understand this by going back to one root cause and blaming what was done in the past. There is no doubt that the implementation in Iraq after removing Saddam Hussein has had a lasting effect but it’s not the only thing.  Syria for example, as Clare Short and Tony Blair were saying, there has been no Western intervention there but it is still an incredible mess and Iraq, since the removal of Saddam Hussein, has had its problems because Malaki has not been an inclusive leader, he’s alienated the Sunni community but trying to find excuses for what ISIS and others are now doing which is seek to impose a warped ideology on any government of any complexion which isn’t theirs.  If we take our eye off the danger that that is causing to so many, then we’re missing something by constantly going back into the past.  What we should do is deal with …

DM: So what should we do about it? 

ALISTAIR BURT: I was just coming to that.  What we need to do is find the states in the area who are going to tackle the problem because it can’t be done from the West, that is true but on the other hand there might be assistance needed to try and bring together a grouping of Arab states prepared to tackle a challenge that will ultimately threaten them and threaten others …

DM: But that’s Iran. 

ALISTAIR BURT: … but I think what we’ve seen in Syria – and I do disagree very seriously with what Clare Short was saying, I know that I worked and William Hague worked exceptionally hard to work with the Syrian people who wanted a different form of Syria, those are the people we wanted to support but now we’ve seen an example of non-Western intervention, it’s a disaster, we saw an example of intervention which was also in hindsight a problem for Iraq, it’s very difficult if we simply rely on our own judgements and rely on what we do as the only answer and ignore others.  I think we’ve learned that mistake so we need to find the moderate states prepared to take on these evil people who are doing such horrific damage to the people of the region.  

DM: Mr Burt, thank you very much, Alistair Burt there, live from the Egyptian capital and our thanks once again to Clare Short as well.