Former British prime minister Tony Blair supports regime change in Iran and Syria, but has warned that the West faces a “long and hard struggle to defeat terrorism.”
Speaking to the Times of London yesterday, Blair, who oversaw Britain’s participation in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, blamed Iran for helping to prolong the conflicts because he said it continues to “support groups that are engaged in terrorism.”
He stressed, however, that he was not proposing military action against Iran, but that he would like to see an end to the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Regime change in Tehran would immediately make me significantly more optimistic about the whole of the region,” Blair, who is international peace envoy for the Middle East, said in an interview marking the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
He also called on the international community to hasten the departure of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has deployed troops and tanks in a bloody crackdown to crush a six-month-long uprising against his rule.
“He is not going to lead the programme of change in Syria now. He has shown he is not capable of reform. His position is untenable. There is no process of change that leaves him intact,” Blair said.
In other news, Iran on Thursday warned it would “not hesitate” to hit back following a foreign strike on its soil in a formal complaint to the UN over a warning from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy said last week that Iran’s “military, nuclear and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs.”
Iran’s UN envoy said in a letter to UN leaders his country would “not hesitate to act in self-defense to respond to any attack against the Iranian nation.”
Iran would “take appropriate defensive measures to protect itself,” Iranian Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaee told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Security Council, of which France is one of the five permanent members.
Sarkozy had made “inflammatory remarks and baseless allegations,” the envoy added.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran expresses its deep concern over, and strong condemnation of such a provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible statement against Iran,” Khazaee said.
The French leader has been one of the most outspoken critics of Iran in the Western alliance, which has accused Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb.
In an Aug. 31 speech to French ambassadors, Sarkozy did not say which country might carry out the preventive attack.
However, he said “Iran refuses to negotiate seriously” and declared that France would work with its allies to build support for tougher international sanctions. The Security Council has already passed four rounds of sanctions against Iran over its enrichment program.
The Iranian ambassador again denied the charge that his country was seeking a nuclear weapon.
“Iran is a leading nation in rejecting and opposing all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” Khazaee said. “Moreover I wish to reiterate my government’s position that the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention to attack any other nations.”
The Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee has reported several violations of the arms embargo on Iran in recent months. The US and other Western nations have called for a tighter application of the sanctions.
France, Britain, Germany and the US reported Iran’s firing of a satellite in June to the UN sanctions committee as a potential violation. They say the launcher could also be used to carry missiles.
The Western powers say Iran’s move last month to transfer centrifuge production to a secretive plant inside a mountain near Qom, south of Tehran, is a new sign that its nuclear program is not peaceful.
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