Rodney Shakespeare: Use of poisoned gas in Iran-Iraq war was deliberate act of UK foreign policy

Press TV has conducted an interview with Rodney Shakespeare, a political commentator in London, about new documents revealing that the UK government deliberately remained silent about Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons because of trade ties.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Are you at all surprised at these revelations specifically as we even now see that the British government is giving weapons to a lot of governments and monarchies around the world that have terrible human rights records and are using them against their own populations?

Shakespeare: There is nothing surprising in this story but it really is an attempt to minimize what lay behind the situation during the Iran-Iraq war, where Iraq was the aggressor.

The reality is that from 1953 the West suppressed democracy in Iran and when the war started in 1980, they saw the chance to enable Saddam Hussein to wipe out Iran. And as a consequence of the four years of the war, tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers were poisoned and it was a deliberate act of British foreign policy to suppress democracy in Iran.

I would also just add that one of the great advocates of poisoned gas in the UK was Winston Churchill and he certainly carried out his desires against the Kurds in the 19 or 20s. So the UK government’s hands are absolutely filthy. They smell of mustard gas. We have always been prepared to use it. We are prepared to tolerate the use of it by others such as Saddam Hussein.

Press TV: What does this mean for these Western governments particularly the British as well as the Americans who tout human rights in the faces of other countries and impose sanctions on them on those bases?

Shakespeare: What it means is that Western policy is now really at a crossroads. It is exposed as not just hypocritical, but it is thinking it is following its own interest, actually supporting the forces of evil. I mean at this moment, who exactly helped create, arm, finance with the Saudis and the Israelis and the Qataris and the Turks? Daesh. Who has actually created this thing? We have. Unless the West stands up and supports positive modern forces, the only way to oppose Daesh is to support Hezbollah, the Assad government, which we get a 90-percent vote in the election, the Iraqi government and Iran, unless the West turns its policy round, they will find that the things blow back not only from Daesh but from the poison gas used in the past. It is all going to come back and hit the West.

It is time we grew up, stop manipulating other countries and started to support democracy throughout the Middle East instead of these vicious autocratic regimes who, by the way, have used poison gas recently - the one used in Syria was from Saudi Arabia-supplied poison gas. 

Press TV: Does this not also show the malaise of the Western capitalist society where profits were always given priority over human rights and innocent lives?

Shakespeare: This idea that there is British economic interest involved is just not true. If you want to look at Britain’s long-term economic interest, you want to be dealing in a straightforward open way with modern democracies, because the wealth will be a lot more widely spread in those countries and there would be greatly increased trade.

Two hundred years ago we upheld revolutions in South America and we benefited for two hundred years. Western policy in supporting these monstrous brutal regimes is totally out of date. It is time we grew up and so the UK interest and the American interest and Western interest are in supporting the forces of genuine democracy against these monstrous, barbarian, totalitarian regimes like those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar.    

AHK/HSN

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