Saturday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamad ElBaradei has reportedly warned that any military offensive in Iran would turn the Middle East region into a fireball. Reports also quoted him as saying that he would quit his position in the event of a military strike on Iran.
ElBaradei's comments have come in the wake of confirmations by sources at the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies that Israel recently carried out a full rehearsal of an air assault on Iran's nuclear sites. According to the UN nuclear watchdog, a military strike would prompt Iran to build nuclear weapons if it is not already doing so.
The U.S. President George Bush and Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have said in public that a nuclear Iran was "unacceptable". Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has twice acted by itself to stop its regional enemies from developing nuclear capability - in Syria last year and in Iraq in the 1980s.
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June 19, 2026 16:46 ET Major central banks continued to dominate the economic news flow this week too, led by the Federal Reserve, as they announced their latest policy decisions. The Federal Reserve policy session was in focus as it was the first to be led by the new chief Kevin Warsh. In Europe, central banks of the U.K. and Switzerland announced their rate decisions. In Asia, the Bank of Japan drew attention for its policy moves, while data out of China threw some light on the state of the economy.