Hans Blix warns Trump over Iran strike’s WMD echoes

Hans Blix scoured Iraq two decades ago for WMD: Now he has a very stark warning for Trump and ‘contemptuous’ Hegseth SPECIAL OFFER: Sign up to our weekly US politics newsletter and get three FREE months of DailyMail+ HERE See more Daily Mail on Google – save us as a Preferred Source By NICK ALLEN, US NEWS EDITOR (POLITICS) Published: 20:30 BST, 4 June 2026 | Updated: 20:30 BST, 4 June 2026 As America prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, Hans Blix became the face

of the last, frantic search of the desert for Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The veteran United Nations inspector and his team scoured hundreds of sites across the country, reporting back that no stockpile of WMD had materialized. Washington went to war anyway. More than two decades on, Blix, who turns 98 next month, lives quietly in his native Sweden. But age has not softened his view of presidents who he believes have cast aside international law in the name of stopping an

enemy. Now the man who famously disagreed with President George W Bush over Iraq’s weapons program has a strikingly similar warning for President Donald Trump over US attacks aimed at stopping Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. In thoughts shared with the Daily Mail by email, Blix accused Trump of treating international law as irrelevant and said the administration’s justifications for the Iran war were ‘far-fetched.’ He also took aim at War Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of showing a ‘contemptuous attitude’ toward the rules

of war. Blix argued that the Trump Administration’s case for striking Iran bore a troubling resemblance to that advanced before the invasion of Iraq. Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, speaks to reporters in front of the al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad after arriving for talks with Iraqi officials in January 2003 For those who have strong memories of the early 2000s, the echoes are hard to miss. Blix was born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1928 and studied at Cambridge University in the UK before

becoming a professor of international law. He was Sweden’s Foreign Minister in the 1970s, then led the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997. In that role, he was the first Western official to inspect the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But it was Iraq that made him a global name. As war loomed, Kofi Annan, then the UN Secretary General, asked Blix to come out of retirement to lead the hunt for the weapons that Washington insisted Saddam was hiding. Blix

led the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and did not go easy on Baghdad. He criticized Iraq for failing to be transparent about its weapons programs and repeatedly demanded proper cooperation. Blix never found evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction US soldiers secure a house during the invasion of Fallujah, Iraq, on November 9, 2004 However, after inspecting 700 potential sites, he did not find the smoking guns that the Bush administration wanted. In February 2003, he told the UN Security

Council that inspectors had ‘not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions.’ His reports fell far short of giving President Bush the evidence that would secure UN support for a war on Iraq. Instead, Bush ordered Blix and the other inspectors to pull out of Iraq and, in March, the US, UK and a smattering of coalition allies invaded without a UN mandate. Blix condemned the actions, calling the reasons behind it ‘absurd.’ The invasion led to the overthrow and

execution of Saddam and unleashed years of bloody sectarian violence that almost tore Iraq apart. No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix at his home in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2024 President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2003 A US Marine covers the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s statue in April 2003 Blix’s failure to find WMD and refusal to confirm Washington’s claims made him a target for pro-war factions

in the US. He later described some of his critics as ‘b******s.’ Then came Hollywood ridicule. In the 2004 puppet satire Team America: World Police, from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Blix was mercilessly mocked as a hapless UN scold who threatened North Korea’s Kim Jong Il with an ‘angry letter’ before being thrown into a shark tank. Blix subsequently laughed off the parody, saying: ‘I heard there was a picture in the US about Iraq and and I feature as a

character who tells Kim Jong Un “If you do not behave I will report!” ‘And, thereafter, he says f*** you, Hans Blix, and chops off my head. ‘I don’t mind, this is the way I’m known around the world, but my reaction is rather to the substance – a report is not such an innocent thing, it may be quite an important thing, actually.’ Hans Blix is still defending the role of international law aged 97 and living in Sweden Blix accused President Trump of

ignoring international law with his war against Iran Members of Delta Company, part of the 82nd Airborne, on patrol in Baghdad two decades ago That belief has not dimmed. Blix is now a member of the European Leadership Network, an independent group of 450 former ministers, diplomats and security experts working on global security challenges. He remains fiercely protective of the UN charter and the international rules that govern when states can go to war. His belief is that Bush and former UK Prime Minister

Tony Blair should ‘in principle’ be tried for war crimes at The Hague over Iraq. Bush and Blair have both denied they violated international law. Now, Blix claims US justifications for the current Iran war are not convincing. Hans Blix accused Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of being ‘contemptuous’ of international law The Daily Mail’s front page on March 6, 2003 ‘The United States has hinted at various motives for joining Israel’s attacks on Iran in 2025 and 2026,’ Blix told the Daily Mail. ‘Least

convincing has been the claim that it is responding to an existing Iranian military threat against the United States. ‘By April 2026, the United States appears to have settled on justifying the attacks on the grounds of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.’ He claimed that put Washington ‘in line with the Bush administration’ justification for the Iraq invasion. Blix also argued that the US had ‘aligned itself with Israel’s policy of ignoring the UN’ when using ‘preventive force’ to stop the feared development of

nuclear weapons. By contrast, the UN position was that unilateral attacks to prevent another country developing nuclear weapons carried too great a risk. That way, he warned, led to the ‘law of the jungle.’ If military action were collectively endorsed by the international community, Blix said, that was a different matter. But the Iran offensive had no such backing. ‘Even when states break the rules, they typically, hypocritically, affirm their acceptance and respect for them by advancing far-fetched legal arguments as to why their particular

actions did not violate those rules,’ he said. ‘When President Trump recently declared without embarrassment that the United States’ attack on Iran was defense against threats from that country, he was following a familiar – but untenable – line. ‘A contemptuous attitude toward international law rules concerning warfare is equally reflected in Defense Secretary Hegseth’s blunt exhortation to American forces to aim for “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”’ A plume of smoke rises after a strike on the Iranian capital Tehran, on March 3, 2026

People attend a ‘No More War’ protest marking the anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, outside a military recruiting station in Times Square, in New York City, in March Blix said an important question for the future was ‘whether Trump and his administration have become prepared to withdraw from international law alone among the community of nations.’ He added: ‘The Trump administration’s attitude toward international law and concluded agreements must be continually monitored. ‘A negative or indifferent American stance toward legal obligations would harm

everyone. The world – both individual countries including the United States, and the community of states – needs rules of law and respect for them in order to promote cooperation and predictability for investment, trade, and travel.’ For Blix, the lesson of Iraq is not ancient history. It is the warning that he has spent more than 20 years repeating. He said the international community ‘has reason to make clear, without mollifying mumbling, that it is not the law of the jungle but international law

that governs relations between states.’ Sign up to our weekly DC Insider newsletter HERE for a front-row seat to Washington. and unlock 3 FREE months of DailyMail+ SwedenIraqIran Share or comment on this article: Hans Blix scoured Iraq two decades ago for WMD: Now he has a very stark warning for Trump and ‘contemptuous’ Hegseth Add comment

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