Papers show Tony Blair believed Britain 'could not stand aside' from Iraq war

Newly declassified documents reveal the UK sought to weaken France and Germany's stance that conflict was a last resort

Tony Blair and George Bush forged a close alliance after 9/11 that led to accusations of Britain being a US 'poodle'. Getty Images

Tony Blair signalled to aides a year before the Iraq War that Britain “could not stand aside” from an invasion, according to declassified papers that revealed UK officials worked tirelessly to blunt European opposition to the offensive.

The newly released files show Mr Blair’s government was eager to ensure “support does not build” behind France and Germany’s opposition to war.

On one occasion, the British EU commissioner at the time, Chris Patten, told Arab diplomats that Iraq should not get the “wrong message” from the anti-war protests in Europe months before the fighting began.

After the invasion in March 2003, Mr Blair sketched out a new foreign policy strategy saying Britain had “six months to settle the world”.

Tony Blair visits British troops in Basra after ordering them into battle in the US-led invasion of Iraq. Getty Images

The Iraq notes are among thousands of papers released by the UK’s National Archives dating from 1999 to 2003, during Mr Blair’s time in office as prime minister.

They include diplomatic cables, notes prepared for Mr Blair when he spoke to foreign leaders and No 10 Downing Street memos which he annotated by hand.

The documents cover the post-9/11 period when Mr Blair and US president George Bush regarded Iraq and Saddam Hussein as the next grave threat.

US 'mind made up'

As early as March 2002, No 10 aide David Manning reported in a meeting with Germany’s ambassador that the US “had made up their minds on regime change”.

“If ultimately there were to be military action, David’s personal view was that the Prime Minister would probably decide that the UK could not stand aside,” said a note of the meeting on March 19.

The files show Mr Blair assuring anti-war leaders, such as German chancellor Gerhard Schroder, that no final decision to invade Iraq had been made.

British troops invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power based on intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction. Getty Images

According to a note in 2002 marked "extremely sensitive", Mr Schroder had privately remarked that he would be lynched if he supported US action against Iraq.

However, UK officials privately doubted diplomacy would work and felt UN weapons inspector Hans Blix was making little progress in Iraq.

Day of protest

With war looming, global peace protests took place on February 15, 2003, including a march by more than one million people in Britain.

Two days later, Britain’s ambassador in Egypt, John Sawers, cabled No 10 to report a “difficult meeting” with Arab ministers at which the London demonstrations were raised.

An anti-war march proceeds past the Houses of Parliament in London, during mass global protests on February 15, 2003. Getty Images

Greek foreign minister Giorgos Papandreou talked up the “pro-peace message” from the protests and invited Arab ideas, the cable said.

But Mr Patten, a former British governor of Hong Kong turned European commissioner, warned that “force could not be ruled out”.

“Time was short and the Iraqis shouldn’t get the wrong message from the demos,” Mr Patten was recorded as saying, in a line someone marked with a highlighter pen.

EU tensions

The same day that No 10 received the cable, Mr Blair had dinner with EU leaders at a tense summit. Aides drew up a list of which countries supported Britain and those in the anti-war camp.

Mr Blair wrote to Greek prime minister Costas Simitis, who was hosting the EU dinner, that “we all of course regard military action as a last resort”.

But “it is imperative that we maintain and increase the pressure on Saddam. Time is now running very short,” Mr Blair wrote.

A key UK aim at the talks was to “avoid [French president Jacques] Chirac and Schroder tying us into their strategy of open-ended inspection”, the No 10 files said.

“You should intervene early to ensure that support does not build behind the Franco-German position,” Mr Blair’s notes for the meeting said.

“If the French or others start a fight, you will need to respond robustly,” his private secretary Matthew Rycroft wrote.

French president Jacques Chirac, right, called for weapons inspectors led by the UN's Hans Blix, left, to be given more time in Iraq. Getty Images

Britain remained eager to win the diplomatic argument even after the invasion began on March 19, 2003, led by US and UK troops, to overthrow Saddam.

At a summit in Brussels a day later, aides prepared "defensive arguments" for Mr Blair if leaders accused him of undermining the UN.

No 10 was warned by the British ambassador in Paris, John Holmes, that Mr Chirac “may try to make flesh creep in a way that could be awkward for us” and an “explosion, perhaps directed at us, cannot be excluded”.

Mr Blair was told to say that “no one worked harder than the UK to try to bridge the gap” on the UN Security Council, which did not explicitly authorise an invasion.

In 2004, Mr Blair admitted in public that the intelligence that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons "was wrong".

The war sapped his popularity and although he won a third term in 2005 with a much-reduced majority, he left office two years later. In 2016 an inquiry found Britain had gone to war when peaceful options were still on the table. Mr Blair said he "made a decision in good faith on the information I had at the time".

Blair doctrine

Less than two weeks after Saddam’s statue was symbolically pulled down in Baghdad, Mr Blair wrote a memo to nine aides on “foreign policy post-Iraq”.

"Like it or not, we have about six months to settle the world in the right pattern," he wrote in a seven-page note that called for close alliances with both the US and Europe.

Under regional headings, he wrote of Britain's approach to the Arab world that "the key to this" is an Israel-Palestine peace process.

His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, commented that engagement with Muslim countries should be part of the "broad global agenda" outlined by Mr Blair.

"We need a long-term understanding on how to build a better relationship between the West and the Islamic world," Mr Straw wrote.

The war in Iraq sapped the Blair government's popularity in Britain even as he was feted in the US. Getty Images

US citizenship offer

While straining to win friends in Europe and the Middle East, Mr Blair was being feted as a staunch ally in Washington after siding with Mr Bush over Iraq.

Do you want to address the US Congress, an aide asked? Mr Blair ticked that by hand. Do you want to accept an Ellis Island Medal? He changed his answer from no to yes.

A US contact advised that the address to Congress would be a "great opportunity for the PM to espouse the Blair Doctrine".

But one offer was deemed too much – the possibility of making Mr Blair an honorary US citizen, like Winston Churchill before him.

His team was shown a draft Senate resolution on citizenship, commending Mr Blair as an “indispensable ally” with “marvellous British wit and charm”.

An email chain shows Mr Blair's aides scotching the idea. “Certainly no,” wrote his chief of staff Jonathan Powell.