Gordon Carrera

Don't go beyond that here and no further.

This is what we know.

This is what we know with confidence.

This is what we don't know with confidence.

And I think that is also the responsibility of intelligence agencies to do that with their political masters and to some extent to resist pressure.

So in a sense, I don't think it was politicization.

I think it was a multi-layered intelligence failure.

Not beyond doubt.

It does bring us up to date because the legacy of Iraq there, there've been changes within MI6, within the UK and the intelligence community with how it presents intelligence, how it talks about intelligence in enforcing politicians to only use certain language.

It was interesting though, even when you got to the run up to the war, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022,

You could still see the legacy of Iraq because people in British intelligence and government were thinking, we want to present the intelligence about what Russia's intentions are because we've discovered them.

But you could still see the nervousness about...

Whether politicians might speak about it wrongly, whether people wouldn't trust it, all of that was the legacy of Iraq still shaping it.

And I think making them, to some extent, overcautious in some cases.

I think British intelligence has been overcautious in sharing information because it was so bruised

by the experience of Iraq.

It's shaped, hasn't it?

Both CIA, MI6, British government, American government, and it's shaped their intelligence agencies and led, I think, sometimes to an overcaution because of the scars of Iraq.

But yes, there are certainly more kind of stricter controls in place.

I mean, it is interesting, just to finish as we talk about this now in 2026, where you've got a war in Iran going on.