Saddam Hussein 'more scared of Iran than the US'

Saddam Hussein 'more scared of Iran than the US'

Times Online
July 2, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6621982.ece

Saddam Hussein let the world believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
because he did not want to appear weak to Iran, according to the Washington
Post.

In interviews with the FBI before he was hanged, the former Iraqi president
also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said the United States was
not Iraq's enemy, the Post reports.

In fact, he claimed, he felt so vulnerable to the threat from "fanatic"
leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security
agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the
region," according to declassified accounts of the interviews released on
Wednesday and published in the Washington Post

Former president George W Bush, supported by former Prime Minister tony
Blair, ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that
Saddam's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, despite the failure
of UN weapons inspectors to uncover any such weapons.

During his interviews - 20 formal interrogations and five 'casual
conversations' which were carried out in 2004, Saddam admitted that he
should have allowed the United Nations to witness the destruction of his
country's weapons stockpile after the 1991 Gulf War.

The FBI summaries of the interviews were obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act by the National Security Archive, an independent
non-governmental research institute, and posted on its Web site on
Wednesday. The last formal interview, held on May 1 was completely redacted
but the others had few deletions, the Washington Post reports.

The formal interviews, held from February 7 to May 1, covered Saddam's rise
to power, the Kuwait invasion, and the crackdown on the Shiite uprising in
extensive detail, while the subject of the weapons of mass destruction and
al-Qaeda were raised in the casual conversations, held after the formal
interviews from May 10 to June 28.

George Piro, the agent who conducted the interviews, raised Iraq's alleged
links with al Queda in his last conversation with Saddam but Saddam's
replies negated the Bush administration's efforts to link him with Osama
bin Laden.

Saddam told Mr Piro that he had never met bin Laden and that the two men did
not share "the same belief or vision". He said that "he was a believer in
God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not
mix."

When the FBI agent said there were reasons why Saddam and al-Qaeda should
have cooperated, as they had the same enemies in the United States and
Saudi Arabia, Saddam replied that the United States was not Iraq's enemy,
and that he simply opposed its policies.

He also made it clear that he considered Iran a greater threat than the
United States, saying that he was convinced Iran was trying to annex the
largely Shiite southern Iraq.

"The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the
return of UN inspectors," Mr Piro wrote. "Hussein stated he was more
concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than
the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN
inspectors back into Iraq."

Saddam was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and he was hanged in December
2006. 

-- 
Facts are sacred ... but comment is free

date: Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:31:07 GMT author: Robin T Cox