The US risks repeating the “awful” results of the Iraq War if it joins Israel in trying to destroy the Iranian regime, former chief UN weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix has warned.
In 2002 and 2003, Blix led the extensive hunt for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in Iraq for months while the US and UK were threatening to attack Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, now aged 97, told the UN Security Council that no evidence of any weapons had been found. George W Bush and Tony Blair pushed ahead with an invasion anyway, but no weapons of mass destruction were ever uncovered.
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The current situation with Iran has strong “similarities,” said Blix. The US and Israel – potentially with UK support – are “both using the suspicions of acquisition of nuclear arms as a main argument in favour of action. In reality, what they want is regime change.
“Regime change is illegal, and it is also very dangerous. They thought removing Saddam would solve the situation, and they brought the Middle East to the worst situation I can imagine… The whole region has been embroiled in the consequences.”
Speaking to The i Paper from his home in Sweden, the former diplomat accused Western leaders of hypocrisy for their response to Israel’s call for people in Iran’s, capital, Tehran to evacuate.
“If Putin had come out and urged that Kyiv should evacuate, we would have seen a very strong Western and European reaction. I note that we have not seen such reaction in the West now.”
He described Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump’s threats to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei as “shocking” and “another step in a direction of primitivity”.
In March 2003, Blix, right, told the UN Security Council that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq after hundreds of searches – but the US and UK invaded anyway (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty) He spent decades inspecting nuclear sites, including Chernobyl – here pictured in July 2003 (Photo: Sergey Supinsky/AFP)Why Israel’s attack could backfire
Blix acknowledges that the Iranian regime has a terrible human rights record, including public executions, the suppression of women’s rights, and detention of opposition voices – and admits that leaving Saddam in power was not an attractive option either.
Iran’s funding and supply of weapons to proxy militant groups – Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – are well documented, resulting in many Israeli deaths from rocket and terrorist attacks over decades.
Blix believes that Israel’s “fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon is genuine” and accepts that there are reasons to doubt some of Iran’s protestations.
The senior Shia clerics who run Iran “repeatedly tell the world that they have a fatwa that prohibits an Islamic country to build a new weapon… On the other hand, we know that Pakistan – also an Islamic country – they have nuclear weapons.”
Numerous nuclear weapons experts have said that Iran could make a nuclear weapon within six months if it chose to do so.
Hans Blix is now 97 and living in Sweden (Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP) Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran was in breach of nuclear obligations hours before Israel began attacking the country’s facilities, including the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz (Photos: Getty)Nevertheless, Blix doubts the regime in Tehran intended to go ahead in building a bomb before it was attacked.
Iran has enriched uranium to a 60 per cent level – far above the 3.67 per cent needed to generate electricity, but still below the 80 or 90 per cent required to produce a nuclear weapon.
Blix thinks Iran has done this purely with the “highly understandable” aim of securing bargaining power for negotiations, in retaliation at Trump unliterally withdrawing in 2018 from an internationally agreed deal – which Iran was adhering to – and imposing sanctions.
“I don’t see sense in the Israeli plan, because if they now reduce the Iranian programme, can they expect that Iran will stay away in the future? It’s only pushing problems some years ahead.”
Netanyahu’s actions could now backfire, he continued. “It’s a real, real risk that Iran would change their mind and move towards nuclear weapons if they are being subjected to the aggression they now meet.
“They watch North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, and they don’t get attacked from the outside. They can watch Libya deal away their nuclear programme, they got punished for it. The lesson the Iranians are being taught is not a very pretty one.”
Blix meets Iraq’s foreign minister Naji Sabri in Baghdad in January 2003. His teams carried out around 700 inspections of about 40 sites after convincing Saddam’s regime to give access, even to the tyrant’s palace (Photo: Ramzi Haidar/AFP) With Tony Blair outside No 10 in February 2003 (Photo: Ian Waldie/Getty)‘Trump would like the Nobel Peace Prize – maybe he has a dream of being made a saint’
Blix worked in nuclear regulation for decades – including visiting the scene of the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl disaster in 1986 while directing recovery efforts – before taking on the job of leading the UN’s Iraq inspections in 2000.
During worldwide demonstrations by millions of people against an American and British invasion of Iraq in 2003, some protesters carried billboards saying “Blix not bombs”. This is now the title of a new documentary on his career.
Blix declared at the time: “There is an alternative to war, and that is what we want to achieve.”
“We carried out about 700 inspections,” he says now. “We went to about 40 sites that had been recommended to us by US and UK intelligence. At none of those sites did we find any weapons.” His team even checked Hussein’s palace and was filmed searching fridges in the tyrant’s kitchen.
American hawks, including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, refused to believe this in the fevered atmosphere after Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks. Blix was dismissed in parts of the American press as “incompetent” and “a dupe”.
Washington’s neoconservatives had to admit in the months and years later that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
Blix appeared – in puppet form – in 2004 satirical movie Team America: World Police – he gets fed to a shark by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-ilHe thinks the “self-centred” US and Israeli leaders today are similarly misguided. “Netanyahu is a consummate politician,” he said. “He may be describing Iran as a danger to persuade Israeli public opinion that they need a strong leader.
“Trump would like to be loved by the world and by the US. He would like to have the Nobel Prize for Peace, maybe he has a dream of being canonised as a saint.” He chuckles to himself at this. “He certainly wants to stand out as someone who didn’t start wars.”
However, he says Trump is likely to encourage more conflicts through “this ignorance and this arrogant attitude” over Iran: “Preventive, pre-emptive or anticipatory self-defence are not recognised in international law, so they are moving towards erosion of the UN Charter – and they are helped by the Russians in their aggression in Ukraine.”
A recent documentary about the weapons inspector, Blix Not Bombs, takes its title from anti-war placards protesters carried ahead of the Iraq War (Photo: Chris Morphet/Getty)Suggesting a practical solution to the crisis, he says that Iran should be encouraged to collaborate on a joint civil nuclear power programme with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
He admits this would be difficult because Iran and Saudi Arabia are fierce Sunni-Shia rivals, but thinks it could improve trust and transparency.
@robhastings.bsky.social
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