Photo Credit:  Gary Raynaldo  /  ©Diplomatic Times  / Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair  speaks on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, NY Feb. 04, 2020.

By Gary Raynaldo        DIPLOMATIC TIMES

NEW YORK –  Former British prime minister Tony Blair is of the belief that U.S. President Trump’s targeting killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani last month “was a justifiable retaliation against what  the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had been doing.”  Speaking in New York, at the Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday,  Blair made the comment against the backdrop of the  recent U.S. strike that killed Suleimani.  The former UK PM spoke at the CFR in a talk entitled “The Road Ahead With Iran: A Conversation With Tony Blair”.  He discussed the critical role of Iran’s IRGC, including the ways it mobilizes and radicalizes its fighters for violence at home and abroad, and the road ahead for the United States and Europe.  While Blair believes the U.S. strike was justifiable retaliation, he added that he thinks its wisdom in the end will be judged by whether it’s part of a strategy and not simply an isolated act. “I think the killing of Suleimani, though, has to be set in the context of what the strategy is to deal with Iran over the  long term.” During his talk, Blair also touched  on such issues as sanctions against Iran, the nuclear deal, and Iran’s proxy wars in the region.  Many political observers believe that the killing of Suleimani does not necessarily make America safer. Blair said the U.S. action is a signal to the Iranian regime that if they take further action they can’t be sure what the response is going to be.

“…the Suleimani strike was to say to the Iranian regime, you can’t-you can’t be sure what the next-  what the next phase of this is going to be, because it looked like – after the attacks on the tankers, Saudi Aramco, the drone- it looked like America had just decided to hold off, right?  So, look, I’m not – I don’t elevate this to strategy. As I say, I think a strategy is what is the whole picture you put together. But I think it’s, you’ve got to  at least say it’s open to debate that it put the regime off-balance, somewhat.”

-Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Blair said the U.S. strategy appears to be “unpredictability” regarding Iran.  The former UK PM said what the killing of Suleimani has done is made the Iranian regime uncertain as to what its next steps should be, because they don’t know what the reaction of what the Trump’s administration is going to be.

UK and West Must Treat Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a Terror Group:  Blair

The former British PM also reiterated is call for the UK and other western governments to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. The London-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change said in a report published this week that IRGC is a terror group like  Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

IRAN Must Chose Between Hard-Line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Sanctions Relief:  Blair 

“When President Trump re-imposed sanctions, the effect on the Iranian economy was immediate and severe.I think that’s basically true. But I think you just can’t tell what—the calibration of any such negotiation between sanctions relief and changes in their behavior is going to be incredibly difficult to do. And I don’t think you could—I think at this stage, by the way, you can’t say exactly what you’d do. You’d have to look at the circumstances as they develop. But you know, changing their—I mean, changing their behavior in the region is of fundamental importance in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, in Lebanon—actually, further afield.” –  Tony Blair 

Credit:  Gary Raynaldo  /  ©Diplomatic Times  / Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair  speaks on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, NY Feb. 04, 2020.

DIPLOMATIC TIME Video / Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair  speaks on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, NY Feb. 04, 2020.

Russian President Putin Understands Power:  Blair

“Well, what the Russians have realized is that as the United States and its allies become deeply resistant—for all the reasons we know—to engagement in Middle East conflict, they’ve got an opportunity to reassert their power within the region. And they’ve taken that opportunity. And they’ve done it in Syria by allying themselves with the regime, with Iran. And they’ve done it—you’d have to say they will—they will have regarded—despite the fact they actually have suffered. It’s been expensive for them. They have suffered casualties, albeit sometimes through mercenary outfits. The fact is they will regard themselves as having now the great hand on the future of Syria. And you can see particularly by what the Russians, for example, do in—are doing in Libya, that they also have extraordinary flexibility. I mean, for the Russians, it’s—you know, people often—because I obviously dealt with President Putin quite a lot when I was in office. And they say, well, we find him hard to work out. I say, it’s not really hard to work out at all. He understands power. And it’s about Russian strength. And his belief is, he’s a Russian nationalist.”

Credit:  Gary Raynaldo  /  ©Diplomatic Times  / Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair at  CFR in Manhattan, NY.

“But I think it’s—the truth of the matter is, if the revolution collapsed, and Iran changed, it would be the single most liberating thing for the region. That’s the truth.”

-Tony Blair