Dick Cheney wanted to remake Middle East after 9/11, invade Iraq: Tony Blair

LONDON - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that former Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to remake the Middle East after 9/11, and invade not only Iraq, but Iran and Syria as well.

Blair mentions in his memoir ‘A Journey’ that Vice President Cheney had an ambition to reconstruct the power structure of several countries in that part of the world.

Cheney would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — ezbollah, Hamas, etc., Blair wrote in his memoir, ‘A Journey’, the Daily News reports.

Tony Blair told Christiane Amanpour on ABC’s ‘This Week’ that 69-year-old Cheney believed ‘the world had to be remade after September the 11th’.

Blair writes in his book that Cheney wanted to deliver a message to nations he felt were supporting terrorists and terror organizations.

“He was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. We’re coming after you so change or be changed. You can’t dismiss that Cheney view and say, well, that’s just stupid,” the paper quoted, Tony Blair’s writing in the book.

“Maybe if [Iran] got them, they would never use them. But I don’t think, if I was a leader today, and certainly, this is the view I took then, I don’t think I would take the risk,” he added. (ANI)