Chilcot report: Tony Blair claims Iraq War was 'not in vain' after being asked whether he is deluded

'I sincerely believe that we would be in a worse position if we hadn’t acted in that way,' he said

Tony Blair with troops from The Royal Logistics Corps while he visited Shaiba Logistics Base in Basra, 2005 (Getty)

Tony Blair has claimed the Iraq War was “not in vain” after being asked whether he was deluded over the decision to invade and its aftermath.

The former Prime Minister has been defending his decision following the results of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry, which concluded that the legal basis for the conflict was “far from satisfactory”.

“The events in Iraq did not go the way we wanted them to,” Mr Blair said in an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme.

“There were mistakes made, the intelligence was wrong and I relied on it…of course I in retrospect that we didn’t challenge it.”

Saying he thought about the decision for Britain to joint he US’ invasion of Iraq “every day”, Mr Blair maintained that he did not regret it.

He added: “I sincerely believe that we would be in a worse position if we hadn’t acted in that way. I may be completely wrong about that and these are very difficult judgements.”

When presenter John Humphrys asked whether Mr Blair was “deluded”, he persisted that the “struggle was not in vain”.

“Why don’t they say they disagree?” he asked. “What if we had left him there? What would he have done? What would the consequences would have been in the Arab Spring? Look at Libya today, look at Syria today.”

Some relatives of the 179 British soldiers killed during the conflict are calling for criminal prosecution over failings in military planning and preparedness.

The Chilcot report did not draw conclusions on the legality of the actions but provided a damning indictment of the lead-up to the conflict and UK’s response to warnings over the chaos and terror that would sweep Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein.

It said Saddam posed "no imminent threat" at the time of the invasion and the war was unleashed when diplomatic efforts had not been exhausted, on the basis of "flawed" intelligence that was not subject to sufficient challenge or oversight.

The probe found the military intervention ended six years later "a very long way from success", with the "humiliating" spectacle of UK troops in Basra making deals with local militia who had been attacking them.

Evidence revealed that in July 2002 - eight months before Parliament approved military action – Mr Blair committed himself in writing to backing the US president over Iraq, telling him: "I will be with you whatever."

Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said he would like to see the former Prime Minister investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a crime of aggression and face parliamentary action to stop him holding public office again.

Families of some of the military personnel killed in Iraq described him as "the world's worst terrorist" and Jeremy Corbyn offered an apology on Labour's behalf for what he branded "a stain on our party and our country".

Before the report's publication the ICC said it was conducting a "a preliminary examination with respect to the situation in Iraq" to determine if an investigation should be launched.

It added: "An important distinction must be borne in mind between war crimes, which fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, and the crime of aggression, which, at the present stage, does not. These are two very distinct crimes with their own legal elements of criminality."