Boris Johnson claims the Iraq War was a ‘mistake’ but says Britain must be willing to dare to step back into the Middle East

BORIS Johnson claimed the Iraq War was a “mistake” but says Britain must be willing to dare to step back into the Middle East.

The Foreign Secretary said UK foreign policy ‘is not the problem, it is part of the solution’ to the troubles in Syria and Yemen.

And in a speech in London this morning he said problems in those countries have been “exacerbated not so much by meddling as our aloofness”.

But he was willing to admit some of our previous interventions have not been totally successful, saying “with the absence of a clear plan, the war in Iraq was a mistake”.

He said removing Saddam Hussein without a succession programme not only helped cause chaos in the region but “sent a troubling signal around the Muslim world”.

However he said it did not “create the Islamist threat” to Britain, which he said has the "addictive power of crack cocaine".

It comes after Jeremy Corbyn drew links between Britain's involvement in military interventions overseas and terrorism at home during the election campaign.

Mr Johnson said: "To assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples - Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh - with no such history in the region."

And the minister said the way to restoring peace and prosperity in the Muslim world was by strengthening national identities, empowering women and fostering reform.

He said: "British foreign policy is not the problem; it is part of the solution.

"And above all we will win when we understand that 'we' means not just us in the West but the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who share the same hopes and dreams, who have the same anxieties and goals for their families, who are equally engaged with the world and all its excitements and possibilities, who are equally determined to beat this plague."

After the speech he was asked about Donald Trump’s move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – and called it “not helpful”.