Former US secretary of state Antony Blinken has called Washington’s military campaign against Iran a “mistake”, noting that every previous administration looked at it as a last resort.

“Something that President Trump chose, military action, I think … was a mistake, because every previous administration had looked at it and decided that it needed to be a last resort, because even if you did it, you could set Iran back for a little while, but you would really likely only get a setback of a couple of years,” Blinken says on a panel discussion, footage of which has been shared by Iran’s Fars News Agency.

“The programme would have been more deeply buried underground and they would come back and do even more.”