The Associated Press, Berlin, 26 September 2008 – The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog warned in comments published Friday that Iran is one of several countries on the “path” to possessing the ingredients for making a nuclear weapon.

Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted in the Friday edition of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily as saying that there is “a whole list of countries that posses the ingredients to assemble an atomic weapon in a matter of a few months, that possess fissile material or the technical means to create it.”
“Iran is also on this path,” the paper quoted El-Baradei as saying.

He went on to say that “we live in a world in which atomic weapons promise power and prestige,” noting that Iran’s desire to possess a nuclear weapon is a product of “an underlying feeling of insecurity and the desire to be recognized as a regional power.”