Tony Blair’s claims that Iran now poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein's Iraq have been dismissed as a "piece of spin" by the British ambassador to Tehran.
Sir Richard Dalton was fiercely critical of Blair's testimony at the Iraq inquiry yesterday, in which the former Prime Minister compared Iran's nuclear proliferation to the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons program before the war.
Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said the international community must now be prepared to take a "very hard, tough" line with Tehran.
He also attacked Iran for supporting the Islamic extremist insurgency after the Iraq regime had been toppled, saying it had nearly caused the coalition mission to fail.
However today Sir Richard said Blair was only suggesting a harder line with Iran to justify his own military action against Iraq.
“To say that Iran was the principal reason seemed to me to be part of a broader argument which he was trying to make, namely that it makes what he did in Iraq look better if he extends it to the future and says the policies then might have to be applied," the ambassador said.
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