Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has ignited a new controversy around his role in the invasion of Iraq. In an interview with the BBC, Blair admitted he would have joined the US-led attack on Iraq irrespective of his purported beliefs on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair: “I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat, but I find it quite hard, because I spend so much time out there now, and, you know, they’re about to have an election which will be probably the single most significant thing that’s happened in that region for many years, because they’ve managed at long last to break out of actually the religious divide.”

Blair is scheduled to appear before a government commission investigating the Iraq war next month. Much of Blair’s testimony will remain sealed.