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Iran: An Informed and Timely Warning

Australia's ABC News reports on the facts - aside from misplaced rhetoric emanating, especially, from the White House - on Iran's nuclear capacity and the caution which ought to be exhibited before thinking of attacking the country.

"UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed El Baradei said he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.

"We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program," the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told CNN.

"Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons... they are at least a few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments.

"My fear is that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."

And no less importantly

"Mr El Baradei also accused Israeli of taking "the law into their own hands" with a mysterious raid on Syria last month, and demanded more information about what was hit.

Neither Israel nor the United States has furnished "any evidence at all" to prove that the Syrian site bombed in early September was a secret nuclear facility, he said.

"That to me is very distressful because we have a system: if countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us. We have the authority to go out and investigate," he said.

"But to bomb first and then ask questions later, I think it undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion, because we are the eyes and ears of the international community."

Let it not be said that we haven't been warned!

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