Dr ElBaradei said a nuclear-armed Iran would be terrible but the jury was still out as to whether the country even wanted nuclear weapons.

But he said you could not “bomb knowledge”, and he was scathing towards those who still favoured air strikes after the experience of intervention in Iraq.

“I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis innocent civilians are dying,” he said. “I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’”

Asked who the “new crazies” were he replied: “Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.”

Dr ElBaradei said he was not referring to President George Bush but his remarks are likely to be interpreted as a swipe at those neo-conservatives in the US who still favour military action.

Yeah because God knows he wouldn’t want to take a swipe at Bush…

Anyway, does anyone else have a problem with the director of the IAEA essentially saying that his job is to not allow a war in Iran? His job has nothing to do with a war anywhere. His job is to report if a country is developing a nuke, inspect it, stop it, or get the fuck out of the way. Period.

You can make the argument that his job has repercussions, but that doesn’t equate to “making sure” he doesn’t give ammo to the crazies who want to bomb Iran. After an admission like that, you have to wonder how much information he’s looking at through the filter of “yes it’s bad, but would it cause a war if I reported it?”

And while we’re on the subject, since our good friend has mentioned he doesn’t want to give the “crazies” more ammo, and that he wasn’t referring to President Bush when he said it, who the hell was he talking about?

In the light of Iran’s secretive dealings with black market nuclear suppliers he said it owed his agency a confession over its once clandestine activities.

In his latest report, last week, he said Iran continued to enrich uranium and information on its activities was now “deteriorating.”

Then I’d say you’d have to stop worrying about people bombing Iran and start actually worrying about what they’re doing that you don’t know about, huh?

Source: BBC via Hotair.