3.4 |
Development of UK strategy and options, late July to 14 September
2002
45.
Mr Scarlett
advised on 31 July that Iraq considered a US attack to be
likely.
46.
There was
no intelligence of serious rifts within the regime and the
perception
that senior
members would be targeted by the US gave them no incentive to
work
directly
against Saddam Hussein.
47.
Some key
members of Saddam Hussein’s regime were reported to
favour
allowing
inspectors to return.
48.
Popular
uprisings would only be possible if there was a credible
coalition
attack
“with the clear intention of finishing off the
regime”.
49.
On 31 July,
Mr Scarlett provided a note “examining the weaknesses and
sources of
friction
within the regime”, in response to a request from Sir David
Manning, Mr Blair’s
Foreign
Policy Adviser and Head of the Overseas and Defence Secretariat (OD
Sec),
for more
work on the cohesion of the Iraqi regime.16
As well as
internal regime tensions,
which had
been examined in the JIC Assessment of 4 July, ‘Iraq: Regime
Cohesion’,
and
discussed in Mr Blair’s meeting of 23 July (see Section 3.3),
Mr Scarlett addressed
military
preparations and the attitudes of the Iraqi populace.
50.
Mr Scarlett
wrote that the Iraqi regime considered a US attack to be “likely”;
and it
saw the
“greatest threat in the short term as coming from an ‘Afghanistan’
scenario of air
strikes and
Special Forces supporting an internal uprising”. But Saddam Hussein
was
“beginning
to realise that a much larger US military operation” was “now
possible”.
51.
The UK had no
“intelligence suggesting any serious rifts within the senior
members
of the
regime”. There were differences within the Iraqi regime over
permitting the return
of UN
inspectors. Mr Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister,
Mr al‑Hadithi, the Foreign
Minister,
Mr Izzat Ibrahim al‑Duri, the Vice Chairman of the
Revolutionary Council,
and
Mr Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son, were “reportedly … more
in favour”.
Mr Scarlett
judged that policy differences were “unlikely to be a serious
concern” for
Saddam
Hussein: he totally dominated the regime and “despite any damage to
his
prestige
from allowing the return of inspectors” there was “little risk to
him personally
from making
sharp changes in policy”. He had “done so in the past” and his
deputies
disagreed
“at their peril”. It was “likely that senior members of the regime”
judged
that “the
US threat to topple the regime” would “include them”. There was
“little or no
incentive
for them to work directly against Saddam”.
52.
Conditions
inside Iraq were better than they were “immediately before the
start
of the
Oil‑for‑Food (OFF) programme in late 1996”; but the “greatest
losers under
sanctions”
had been the middle classes. There was “no reliable information on
public
opinion
inside Iraq”, but a belief that the Iraqi population was “cowed by
Saddam’s
security
apparatus”.
16
Minute
Scarlett to Manning, 31 July 2002, ‘The Iraqi Regime: Risks and
Threats’.
101