> SVG was seen as a potential flash replacement?

Yes, that was a large part of the thrust back in the day. Even if it wasn't officially a goal of the SVG working group, there was a lack of an open standards-based alternative to what Flash was able to do, and the developers of the SVG standard saw that adding animation/tweening wouldn't take much given what browsers were already becoming capable of.

a little bit of a, a little bit of b. to displace flash if you don't like it, SVG has to have flash-like features to appeal to those who do use it and steal them away.