A Ghost of Failed Diplomacy in Gaza: Tony Blair

IN FOCUS, 13 Oct 2025

Diran Noubar – TRANSCEND Media Service

Why Inviting This Warhawk to Gaza’s Table is a Recipe for Disaster

12 Oct 2025 – In Roman Polanski’s 2010 thriller The Ghost Writer, Pierce Brosnan slithers across the screen as Adam Lang, a fictional ex-prime minister whose polished charm masks a labyrinth of war crimes, corporate kickbacks, and international intrigue. The film, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel, was explicitly inspired by Tony Blair – the real-life British leader whose tenure ended in 2007 amid accusations of mendacity and mass murder.

Brosnan himself studied Blair’s mannerisms for the role, capturing that oily charisma that once dazzled voters but now reeks of desperation. Harris, fueled by fury over Blair’s Iraq misadventure, even called for the former PM to face a war crimes tribunal – a sentiment that feels prophetic today, as whispers swirl of Blair resurfacing in Gaza’s fragile peace talks under a potential Trump administration. Why dredge up this spectral figure? In a region scarred by decades of displacement and deceit, enlisting Blair isn’t just tone-deaf; it’s a sabotage disguised as statesmanship. His career is a litany of broken promises, blood-soaked blunders, and brazen cash grabs – a blueprint for why “peace processes” involving him are doomed to echo the hollow platitudes of his Downing Street memoirs.

The Blair Mirage: A Meteoric Rise Built on Smoke and Mirrors

Tony Blair wasn’t born a villain; he was sculpted one by the ruthless alchemy of 1990s British politics. Born in 1953 in Edinburgh, he clawed his way to the Labour Party leadership in 1994, rebranding the socialists as “New Labour” – a slick pivot from class warfare to middle-class aspirations.  By 1997, he swept into 10 Downing Street on a tidal wave of optimism, promising education reform, economic boom times, and an end to the Tory sleaze that had poisoned the prior decade. For a spell, he delivered: GDP soared, NHS waiting lists shrank, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 sealed peace in Northern Ireland, a genuine feather in his cap amid the Troubles’ rubble.  Blair’s government also navigated the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 London bombings with a veneer of resolve, positioning the UK as America’s steadfast ally in the “war on terror.”

But peel back the gloss, and cracks appear early. Blair’s “reforms” often masked creeping privatization: Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) saddled public services with debt mountains, while education and health “modernizations” funneled billions to corporate cronies.  His authoritarian streak shone through in curbing civil liberties – think ID cards, expanded surveillance, and knee-jerk anti-terror laws that treated dissent as disloyalty.  By his third term in 2005, the shine had tarnished; approval ratings plummeted as Iraq loomed like a mushroom cloud over his legacy.

Scandals and Sham: The Iraq Debacle and a Career in Freefall

No dissection of Blair’s controversies can sidestep Iraq – the albatross that should have sunk him but instead launched a thousand think pieces. In 2003, Blair hitched Britain’s wagon to George W. Bush’s invasion, peddling the now-infamous “dodgy dossier” claiming Saddam Hussein stockpiled weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) ready to deploy in 45 minutes.  It was a house of cards: No WMDs materialized, the intelligence was “sexed up,” and the Chilcot Inquiry in 2016 eviscerated Blair for misleading Parliament and rushing into war without a viable exit plan.  Over a million Iraqi civilians died in the ensuing chaos, per conservative estimates, birthing ISIS from the ashes of a toppled regime.  Blair’s response? Defiance. He shrugged off calls for impeachment, even as human rights groups branded him a war criminal warranting arrest under international law.

The rot spread domestically too. The Cash for Honours scandal erupted in 2006, with allegations that Blair’s inner circle doled out peerages to wealthy donors who’d bankrolled New Labour.  Though he dodged charges, it reeked of the very sleaze he’d campaigned against. Then there were the “loans for peerages” whispers, arms deals with dubious regimes, and a revolving door to lobbyists that turned Parliament into a pay-to-play parlor. Blair’s exit in 2007 wasn’t a graceful bow-out; it was a fleeing from the flames, leaving Gordon Brown to mop up the mess.

From Public Servant to Private Jet Set: The Post-PM Grift

Freed from the ballot box, Blair reinvented himself as a global consultant – or, more accurately, a high-rolling influence peddler. By 2010, his net worth ballooned to £20 million, fueled by six-figure speeches, advisory gigs for dictators (hello, Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev), and board seats at JPMorgan and Zurich Insurance.  His Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, ostensibly a think tank fighting extremism, rakes in £25 million annually – much from opaque Middle Eastern donors – while critics decry it as a vanity vehicle for rebranding his bloodstained CV.  It’s the ultimate scam: Monetize the wreckage you helped create, then lecture the world on governance from your Martha’s Vineyard mansion.

Gaza’s Grim Reckoning: Blair’s “Peace” as Imperial Poison

Blair’s Middle East meddling didn’t end with Baghdad’s fall. Appointed Quartet envoy in 2007, he was tasked with Palestinian economic development – a role that devolved into window dressing for unchecked Israeli settlements.  Palestinians seethed as Blair funneled aid into “reforms” that ignored occupation realities, earning him tags like “war criminal” from Arab streets and UK activists alike.  Fast-forward to 2025: As Gaza reels from Israel’s post-October 7 onslaught – over 40,000 dead, a territory in ruins – Trump floats Blair for a postwar transitional authority.  The pitch? A five-year “Hamas-free” zone under international oversight, with Blair at the helm, peddling a two-state mirage laced with “Trump Riviera” fantasies.

This isn’t diplomacy; it’s delusion. Blair’s worldview fixates on “Islamist extremism” as the bogeyman, blinding him to root causes like apartheid policies and ethnic cleansing.  His Netanyahu bromance – denying Palestinian statehood while greenlighting Gaza’s “supervision” – reeks of colonial condescension.  Critics, from Palestinian leaders to UN watchdogs, warn his involvement poisons the well: Why trust the architect of Iraq’s apocalypse to midwife Gaza’s rebirth?  It alienates Arabs, emboldens hardliners, and recycles the same top-down failures that birthed today’s quagmire. Involving Blair doesn’t bridge divides; it dynamites them.

Tony Blair’s ghost – equal parts Polanski paranoia and Chilcot condemnation – haunts every “peace” table he crashes. His career’s arc, from reformer to rogue, screams one truth: Handing keys to Gaza (or anywhere) to this serial saboteur is counterproductive folly. It’s not redemption; it’s relapse. Let the man ghostwrite his own irrelevance – the Middle East has enough phantoms already.

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Diran Noubar, an Italian-Armenian born in France, has lived in 11 countries until he moved to Armenia. He is a world-renowned, critically-acclaimed documentary filmmaker and war reporter. Starting in the early 2000’s in New York City, Diran produced and directed over 20 full-length documentary films. He is also a singer/songwriter and guitarist in his own band and runs a nonprofit charity organization, wearemenia.org.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 13 Oct 2025.

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