TEHRAN - Hamid Baeedinejad, director of the Political and International Affairs Department at Iranian Foreign Ministry, has said that comments made by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the Iraq war are “shocking”.

In an exclusive interview with CNN aired on Sunday, Blair said that he’s sorry for “mistakes” made in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, but he doesn’t regret bringing down dictator Saddam Hussein.

“I can say that I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong because, even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought,” he said.

Writing on his Instagram page on Monday, Baeedinejad said Blair’s comments are important because it is about the most important threat against international peace and security.

“The 2003 Iraq war was waged by the George Bush government with support of the U.S. neo-conservatives and participation of the U.S. allies like Britain and its repercussions still persist in the world and the region [the Mideast region] after 12 years,” he wrote.

He added that the military offensive against Iraq destroyed the country’s infrastructure and led to creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Syria (ISIL), also called Daesh.

NA/PA