Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is apologizing for the Iraq War and acknowledging that he could be partly to blame for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“There are elements of truth” to accusations that his and former President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to the rise of the terror group in the Middle East, Blair said in an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN airing Sunday, according to the Daily Mail.
{mosads}”I apologize for the fact that the intellgence we received was wrong,” Blair said. “I also apologize for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the [Saddam Hussein] regime.”
Blair, who resigned as prime minister in 2007, was asked how he felt about being called a “war criminal” by his opponents. He compared the 2003 Iraq situation with the current crisis in Syria, noting how the West and Europe have “stood back” with hundreds of thousands dying.
Blair had previously been less forthcoming about what went wrong in Iraq.
“I don’t think we should be apologizing at all for what we are doing in Iraq,” he said in 2007. “We should be immensely proud.”
Zakaria’s interview with Blair is part of the primetime special “Long Road to Hell: America in Iraq,” which airs Monday at 9 p.m. on CNN.
This report was updated Oct. 25 at 12:54 p.m.