Tony Blair's controversial relationship with the Middle East since leaving office
Tony Blair's controversial relationship with the Middle East since leaving office
Tony Blair has had, it's fair to say, a controversial relationship with the Middle East.
The former prime minister's legacy will always be associated with the invasion of Iraq and the fallout that is still, arguably, a source of instability in the region today.
But despite the outcry over his cheerleading for the war - which has seen calls for his indictment by the International Criminal Court - he continued to play a major role in the region after leaving office in 2007.
As official envoy for the Middle East Quartet (US, Russia, European Union and UN), he was tasked with attempting to bring about a solution to the Palestine-Israel question, something he was unable to achieve.
At the same time, his relationships with a range of Middle Eastern leaders including Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Mohammed bin Salman has provoked criticism from human rights campaigners and democracy activists.
Middle East Eye takes a quick look at what Tony Blair has been up to in the region since he left office in 2007.
A 'weak and irrelevent' Middle East Peace Envoy
For eight years, Blair held the role of official envoy of the Quartet, an international body comprising the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia, aimed at mediating the Israel-Palestine peace process.
It was the first major role Blair took after leaving the British premiership, announcing he had taken up the role on 27 June 2007, the same day he resigned.
The appointment was controversial. Blair's handling of the Iraq war had made him deeply unpopular at home and abroad, while the Palestinians saw him as too close to the US and Israel.
"Israelis like Mr Blair because they believe he is on their side and Palestinians in the main do not trust him for the same reason," said BBC Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen, on the day of the announcement.
However, Blair had also been lauded in the past for his role in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998 and his appointment was welcomed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
His period in the role would see widespread upheaval in the region, including the Arab Spring, war in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State group and multiple Israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip, which had been placed under siege in 2007.
It also saw the ultimate collapse of the so-called Israel-Palestine peace process in 2014, by which point Blair had been largely sidelined from any involvement.
He was accused of being absent in the job, with Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) saying at the time of his resignation that Blair had made “what should be a full-time role, a part-time one”.
Others accused him of a conflict of interest, citing his close ties to and big payouts from autocratic rulers and large corporations.
“What came as a shock wasn’t him leaving, it was that he was still in office. We didn’t hear from him in a very long time,” said Israeli analyst Meron Rapoport at the time.
“Even before then, though, he was looked at with a lot of suspicion from the Palestinians who basically called him an Israeli spokesperson or worse. But also the Israelis, who thought that he was weak and dismissed him as irrelevant.”
Ties with dictators
While the Israelis and Palestinians might have been less than welcoming of Blair, his relationships with other regional rulers grew and grew.
He took numerous trips to visit Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi while in his role as peace envoy, flying to Libya on one of the dictator's private jets. Despite claiming the meetings were not business related, the Independent reported that he "brought a US billionaire to one of the meetings".
Shortly before Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, Blair tried to, in his own words, "use their relationship" to encourage the Libyan leader to flee the country before he was ousted.
Another associate of Blair in the region is Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Blair welcomed Sisi's decision to overthrow the democratically elected government of Egypt in 2013 and by 2014 he was advising the new ruler on “economic reforms”.
Even though the country was facing a bloody crackdown on opposition that had already claimed thousands of lives, Blair reportedly touted the value of "business opportunities" in Sisi's Egypt.
Perhaps his most important relationship, however, was with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In 2017, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) became heavily involved in the crown prince's Vision 2030, a plan of wide-ranging social and economic reforms.
The institute received millions from Saudi Arabia, continuing even after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
Blair said at the time that he “remains strongly of the view that staying engaged there is justified” despite the “terrible crime” that took place.
The TBI also provided paid advice to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, two other countries with a recent track record of suppressing dissent.
Courting Hamas
Despite the perception of Blair as staunchly pro-Israel, and his government's refusal to recognise their legitimacy publicly, as an envoy he held numerous meetings with Hamas leaders.
Middle East Eye reported in 2015 that Blair had met with Hamas' then-leader Khaled Meshaal in Doha before his resignation as Middle East envoy, and continued a dialogue with him even after leaving.
Blair, accompanied by other former British officials, discussed how to end the siege of Gaza, and how to bring greater economy prosperity to the enclave.
He would later invite Meshaal to London for talks, though these did not materialise.
According to senior Hamas officials, Blair engaged Meshaal on a variety of fronts. At the time Hamas was preparing to publish a declaration of principles which revised its 1988 charter to establish a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. Blair offered to take the draft document to Washington. Meshaal refused the offer.
Blair met Hamas leaders at least seven times with talks often going on late into the night, MEE revealed.
The Guardian reported that Blair had also held talks with Ismail Haniyeh, Meshaal’s successor as head of Hamas’s political bureau, who was killed in Tehran by Israel in July 2024.
“In retrospect I think we should have, right at the very beginning, tried to pull [Hamas] into a dialogue and shifted their positions. I think that’s where I would be in retrospect," Blair said in 2017.
“But obviously it was very difficult, the Israelis were very opposed to it. But you know we could have probably worked out a way whereby we did – which in fact we ended up doing anyway, informally.”
In 2024, Blair said that the group could not be allowed to continue to rule Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.
