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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Iraq is a country in crisis again but Tony Blair insists it’s not the legacy of the 2003 invasion but rather a symptom of the West’s failure to intervene in Syria and in a moment we’ll be hearing from the former Prime Minister.  A little earlier I spoke to Tony Blair speaking for the first time since Islamist fighters seized control of a number of cities in Iraq as you’ve been hearing and I started by asking him about George Bush’s mistaken belief that Al Qaeda was in Iraq back in 2003, one of the reasons troops were sent in in the first place, and whether Mr Blair thought it ironic that Al Qaeda was so firmly established now.

TONY BLAIR: Well Al Qaeda in Iraq was effectively beat three or four years ago and what’s happened is this ISIS group which is an extremist Jihadist group has been able to group itself in Syria, arm itself, finance itself, grow in numbers and now it has come over the border from Syria into Iraq and with the chaos and the carnage we see.  This is the problem I’m afraid, that as a result of what has happened in these last few years, we have a situation where Syria is in a state of disintegration and now that has come back over the border into Iraq. Now of course there are many reasons within Iraq itself why this has happened as well, not least the sectarian nature of the government there, the inability to build their own armed forces capability in the right way but I’m afraid we’ve now got this problem right across the Middle East, it’s a fundamental problem and we’ll have to deal with it. 

DM: But you went back three or four years, I was trying to go back eleven years to just before the war started, just before the invasion and that feeling, that belief within some senior members from the Bush administration and not particularly held in Britain, that Saddam Hussein was in alliance with Al Qaeda.  That was not the case, not in any significant form but that it now a tragic reality.

TONY BLAIR: We’ve got to see what’s actually happened in this last period of time.  You can go back and debate what happened eleven years ago but the reason why we have this problem right now is two-fold.  First of all there is what happened in Syria, as I say where this ISIS group has grown up, they actually planned this assault into Iraq from Syria but the other point which is really important to realise is this, because some people will say, well if we hadn’t removed Saddam in 2003 we wouldn’t have the problem today in Iraq and the reason I think that is profoundly mistaken is this, since 2011 there have been these Arab revolutions sweeping across the whole of the region – Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, next door to Iraq in Syria and we can see what would have happened if we had left Saddam there in 2003.  In Syria we have left Bashir Al-Assad in Syria, the result is that there have now in the last three years in Syria been virtually as many people killed as in the whole if Iraq, you now have nine million people displaced from Syria, you have chaos and instability being now pushed across the region.  A country like Jordan for example today has got almost a quarter of its population now Syrian refugees so my point is, you can carry on debating about whether it was right or wrong what we did in 2003 but whatever had been done, you were always going to have a problem of deep instability in the region and in Iraq.  So the question is now, what do we do about it?

DM: So let’s be clear, Mr Blair, you feel no personal responsibility whatsoever for the current sorry state of Iraq?

TONY BLAIR: Of course I’ve got personal responsibility for the decisions that were taken in 2003, that’s not my point.  My point is that whatever had been done in 2003, you were always going to have a situation where Iraq was in a very difficult position because the whole of the region is in a difficult position today and as I say, if we’d taken the opposite decision in 2003, Iraq would be in precisely the situation that Syria is in today.  It’s not a question …

DM: But that’s not the case is it, whatever was done in 2003?  Leave aside the invasion, what happened immediately after that when Paul Bremer, the US representative was put into effectively run Iraq and then he disbanded the Ba’athist party, he said if you are Ba’ath party member you can’t be a member of the civil service, you can’t be a teacher and disbanded the Iraqi Army.  Surely that was a mistake, Iraq might have become a more stable society whatever happened in the Arab Spring.

TONY BLAIR: Just go back to 2003 and look at the debate there was at the time because now say it is very obvious you shouldn’t have disbanded the army and so on.  There was a fierce debate at the time precisely because the army at the time was in the control of the Sunni minority in Iraq, the majority of the country is Shia and was saying both to the Americans and the British at the time you cannot leave this army in place, you cannot leave the Ba’ath party in its position of power so again you can go back eleven years and debate what happened then but I simply put this point to you Dermot, given what has happened in all of the countries I just mentioned across the region, is it seriously and credibly being said that the Arab revolutions would not have come to Iraq?  They would have so the idea that if you’d have Saddam there you would now have a peaceful situation in Iraq, whatever happened in 2003 you were always going to have a situation once these Arab revolutions started sweeping the region, where you were going to have the problems you have now got. 

By the way we have three examples now of Western policy in respect of calling for regime change, we have Iraq where we called for regime change, we changed the regime, we put in troops, that proved very difficult as we know.  We have Libya where we called for regime change, we used air power to get rid of Gaddafi, we didn’t put in ground troops, Libya is now exporting chaos and instability and terrorism across the region and down into Africa now, in sub-Saharan Africa.  Thirdly, we’ve got the example of Syria where two years ago we called for Assad to go, we haven’t taken action to make him go and now we have the situation in Syria which is in the worst state of all three countries.

DM: So dealing with the reality of that situation in Syria, the reality of it now with Assad still partially in place, you are saying in this essay you have written today that Assad cannot win an outright victory, can he win a partial one and should we deal with him on that basis?

TONY BLAIR: Right, well this is a very good question I’m afraid, this is the challenge that we now have because what is necessarily is to understand that Assad remaining in power is bad but also that the opposition is now fragmented between a reasonable, a moderate and modern-minded group of people and these Jihadists, these extremists so what we’re going to have to do is come to an arrangement somehow in Syria where there is a process of transition, a new constitution put in place but it is going to be very, very hard to do that and you are going to have to involve everyone in that process, including those people who are now supporting Assad.  So I am afraid it is a very difficult situation in Syria but be under no doubt at all, because this is what is important about our own attitude to this, people after Iraq said right, when it comes to Syria, we’re not having anything to do with it, we’re going to stay out of it and it’s someone else’s problem.  If you talk to British security people today or the French or the Germans, their single biggest anxiety about our own security in our own country today are returning Jihadist fighters from Syria.  So my point is, I understand entirely why people want to say stay out of it, it’s someone else’s fight, it’s got nothing to do with us but unfortunately the people we’re dealing with, they are going to pull us into this whether we like it or not.  Now that does not mean – and let me make this clear – I’m not suggesting we put ground troops in and we do a full scale invasion as we did in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I am saying we are going to have to take an active role in trying to shape events in Syria and Iraq and indeed across the region. 

DM: As you said there, just clarify for us, part of that is coming to an accommodation with people who are supporting Assad, do you draw the line at Assad himself staying? 

TONY BLAIR: Well I don't think there is any way Assad staying certainly in the medium and long term is going to be acceptable but I’m afraid this is the blunt and brutal reality.  If you want an agreement in Syria today you are going to have to factor in the idea that for the majority of people in Syria today, they simply want the violence to end and they want some attempt to rebuild their country.  You’re not going to be able to do that unless there is a fully inclusive government.

DM: And so was it wrong, in terms of Assad again, was it wrong of the British parliament in effect last year to veto any military action against President Assad and in particular his use of chemical weapons?  Did we make the wrong call in this country?

TONY BLAIR: Well in my judgement, as I said at the time, yes because look, for two to three years now I’ve been saying to people I understand why … I’m not saying anything I didn’t say at the time.  Obviously if I’d been in the House of Commons at the time I would have been supporting the freedom for us to take action if we needed to.  Let’s be clear about what’s happened in Syria, as  I say having now virtually as many people killed in Syria as in the whole of the Iraq conflict since 2003 and you’ve got this situation where you are spilling out instability right across the region – and it’s a country, by the way, disintegrated.  If you look at what’s happened to cities like Aleppo that were proud civilised cities with a history stretching back over centuries, they’re now wrecked.  The point is this, unfortunately because all of these problems in the Middle East arise out of this toxic mixture in my view of bad politics and bad religion and what’s happened is that these groups, these extremist groups are able to operate, destabilise countries and the majority – and by the way this is the good news about the Middle East – the majority of people actually want to live in peace but they are not being allowed to by these extremist groups and the reason why whether we like it or not we’re going to get involved in this ultimately is because these extremist groups also intend to target us.

DM: Do we need to get involved in some form militarily again in Iraq?

TONY BLAIR: When you say involved you certainly don’t need to put in ground troops, no one’s calling for that, no one’s wanting that.  I think the American government and the American President are now considering all their options and we should obviously give what support we can in those circumstances.  I won’t specify exactly how but yes, it is in our interests, in our interests for this Jihadist extremist group to be stopped in its tracks in exactly the same way that in my view it is in our interest, our British national interest, to make sure that the situation in Syria is stabilised and resolved and, as I say, I understand entirely why people say it has got nothing to do with us, we don’t want to hear about it but unfortunately the people we’re fighting out there or the people who are the extremists, who are causing this instability and this chaos, they are not simply fighting Iraqis or fighting Syrians, they are also prepared to fight us and they will if they are not stopped. 

DM: Does what’s happening in Iraq throw doubt in your view on what’s happening in terms of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan?

TONY BLAIR: Well I think, and as I said constantly in respect of Afghanistan, it’s got to be on the basis of the job being done so there is anxiety about the withdrawal in Afghanistan.  On the other hand, as you can see the Afghan forces are obviously in a wholly different stage of preparation and equipment today and people are coming out to vote in the Afghan election.  I think one of the things that we have got to understand about this is that sometimes we look at the Middle East or you go wider than that, you look at Afghanistan, you look at Pakistan, you look right across the whole of North Africa and people in our country say look, it’s all just a big mess, these people don’t want our help anyway.  It isn’t really true, what’s actually happening is that in these majority Muslim countries the majority of people within those countries, in fact they want what we want, they want the rule of law, they want stability, they want some chance of prosperity, they want opportunity and hope for their young people but because of the history of this mixture of religion and politics, there are unfortunately well armed, well financed groups who are prepared to cause instability and chaos and what I think we’ve got to understand is whether it is in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, wherever it is, our job in my view because they also pose a threat to us, is to support those open minded, modern minded people who want the right type of changes within their country and not to believe either that it’s hopeless or that we can afford to disengage.

DM: Just finally  Mr Blair, on the overall reason you have written this long, thoughtful essay on the subject we’ve been discussing and you talk within it about delivering these messages with humility, is that in part a response to your old friend Robert Harris saying that while you were in office you developed a Messiah complex, that you were a narcissist who went mad?

TONY BLAIR: I can’t really comment on what he might write.  These are difficult decisions, I say it with humility because I had to handle global affairs post-9/11 and I have never said that people who disagree with me are stupid or wrong, I understand the arguments both ways.  I think we would have a more healthy debate if we understood that these issues are profound and complex, that the decisions are not easy and that we try to understand as I’m trying to understand, how to move forward given that there are no easy solutions.  Over these past seven years since I left office, I spent a lot of time out in this region, I think about these issues, I study them and I wrote that long essay if you like because I want people to understand not in a sound bite but in a deeper way what I see in this region, what I see the solution is and why it affects our own interests.  So I’m not really interested in trading insults with anyone over it, I just think we are going to face a big problem in our own country if we don’t understand both the complexity of the situation and the need to deal with it.

DM: Tony Blair, many thanks.  The former Prime Minister there on the crisis in Iraq.