Former British prime minister Tony Blair defended the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq on Friday. Blair testified during Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war.

Tony Blair: “My view is if we had left Saddam there and he’d carried on, as we said, with the intent to develop these weapons and the know-how and the concealment program and the sanctions had gone, I have little doubt myself, but it’s a judgment and other people may take a different judgment, that today we would be facing a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran, competing both on nuclear weapons capability and competing, more important perhaps than anything else, competing as well as the nuclear issue, in respect of support of terrorist groups.”