I’m doing some research into Tony Blair and the Iraq War

One thing I’m struggling to understand js we now know that Iraq didn’t have the WMD stockpiles that were claimed at the time. But Saddam had previously pursued nuclear weapons and had used chemical weapons before, so was there not a reasonable concern at the time that he could be developing WMDs again?

Was there actually any credible evidence suggesting Iraq might have restarted a nuclear weapons programme, or was the intelligence much weaker than Blair/the government made it sound?

I’m also curious about the “better safe than sorry” argument. If there was genuine uncertainty about what Saddam was doing, would it have been reasonable to intervene rather than risk finding out years later that he actually had developed nuclear weapons? Or is that a dangerous standard because it could potentially justify invading almost any country suspected of developing weapons?

And legally, what specifically is the argument that made the Iraq War illegal? I’ve seen people mention the UN and the lack of another Security Council resolution, but I’d like to understand the actual reasoning behind it.

Again, I’m not trying to defend Blair or say the war was right I fully believe it wasn’t and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths.