On the evening before ordering a bombing raid on Saddam Hussein in 1998, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair had a “wobble” after a late-night Bible reading session.
This information has been revealed by his much-maligned former communications chief Alastair Campbell in an extract from his diaries.
Mr Campbell who was often reviled as the Labour governments “spin doctor” also famously insisted to the religious Blair that "we don't do God", but he made it clear in his writings that Blair’s faith always played a role in his decision-making.
According to Campbell, Blair got cold feet just hours before an Anglo-American bombing mission against Iraq in 1998, in retaliation for Saddam's failure to co-operate with United Nations weapons inspectors.
"TB was clearly having a bit of a wobble," Campbell wrote in an extract from his diaries, entitled Power and the People, which is serialised in The Guardian.
"He said he had been reading the Bible last night, as he often did when the really big decisions were on, and he had read something about John the Baptist and Herod which had caused him to rethink, albeit not change his mind."
Campbell also reveals in his diaries that ahead of the 1998 operation, Blair gave Saudi Arabia an undertaking that Britain "would not threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq".