Blair says that the reports “show beyond doubt what Iran was up to.” His testimony continued:
What nobody foresaw was that Iran would actually end up supporting AQ. The conventional wisdom was these two are completely different types of people because Iran is Shia, the al Qaeda people are Sunni, and therefore, you know, the two would never mix. What happened in the end was that they did because they both had a common interest in destabilizing the country, and for Iran I think the reason they were interested in destabilizing Iraq was because they worried about having a functioning majority-Shia country with a democracy on their doorstep, and for al Qaeda they knew perfectly well their whole mission was to try and say the West was oppressing Islam. It is hard to do that if you replace tyrannical governments with functioning democracies.
Blair concluded his testimony by saying that one of the most important lessons of the Iraq war “has to do with the link between al Qaeda and Iran.” The importance of that relationship has implications for security policy today, Blair said: The West cannot deal with al Qaeda without dealing with Iran. Let’s hope President Obama is paying attention.
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