John Pedler, who has died aged 90, was a retired diplomat who wrote searing critiques of the Iraq war and the follies that followed in his blog, JP Diplomatic Consultancy (named after his business). He was very much a wise head in a foreign policy milieu where wisdom was not in demand.
In one post, titled “Why they hate us” in 2010, he wrote of the “extraordinary hypocrisy” of the west and how those who led us into the Gulf War“cannot bring themselves to admit to so great an error”.
Somewhat unfashionably, he didn’t view the Obama administration with rose-tinted goggles. He wrote: “It is too weak in congress, too beset with other top priorities, and it is faced with the immense power of the Israel lobby.”
