A senior lawmaker said the United States and its allies used claims about weapons of mass destruction to gain access to Iraq's energy resources during the 2003 invasion of the Arab country.
"It was quite obvious from the very first day that the United States and its allies devised the operation to access Iraq's energy resources," chairman of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said on Friday, Press TV reported.
They used "the issue of WMDs only as a pretext" to reach their objectives in the Arab country, he added.
The lawmaker's remarks came on the heels of a much-anticipated Iraq Inquiry, or the Chilcot report, that investigated Britain's most significant military engagement since the Second World War.
The report, released last Wednesday, found that former UK prime minister Tony Blair took the country into the US-led invasion of Iraq based on "flawed intelligence" about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's WMDs.
In his report, Sir John Chilcot slams security agencies such as MI6 over major errors in their intelligence gathering and assessments.
Chilcot said it worked on the "misguided assumption" that Saddam had WMDs.
"Britain's official admission that Iraq's possession of WMDs was a lie is a very significant development," he said.
The Iranian legislator emphasized that the US and its allies must be held accountable for the killing of the Iraqi people and crimes committed against them during the invasion of the country.
"The Iraqi government can pursue the issue judicially through international bodies," Boroujerdi said.
During the war, nearly 120,000 British military personnel were deployed to Iraq, 179 of whom were killed in combat.
Britain officially ended its involvement in the war in 2009 and Blair received a Medal of Freedom from then US president George W. Bush.
According to California-based investigative organization Project Censored, the invasion and its subsequent occupation claimed the lives of over one million Iraqis.
