No-one who has followed the events leading up to the war in Iraq will ever forget the presentation that US Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the Security Council of the United Nations. With documented evidence in hand and with photographs displayed Powell sought to convince the Security Council members that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was full of dangerous weapons of mass destruction, dangerous not only to the Middle Eastern region but also to the United States and indeed the whole world. These weapons, so argued Powell can be provided to terrorist groups and rogue nations to attack America and the rest of the 'civilized' world and therefore the UN should approve of and nations should participate in a full scale attack on Iraq in order to eliminate this danger.

But the majority of the members on the Security Council did not find Powell's evidence very convincing and denied the US/British resolution, which lead to Bush declaring the UN 'irrelevant' and launching an illegal attack on his own, together with a handful of allies.
It has long since been proven that virtually all of Colin Powell's evidence of WMD and other weaponry supposedly in the hands of Saddam Hussein, was false. Highly embarrassing information showed that some of the data was about ten years old and had been assembled by a student, many of the identified sites had been or were later visited by UN inspectors and were found harmless, documents that provided so-called proof of purchase of uranium from Niger were shown to be fakes etc.

After such an embarrassing display of unreliable 'intelligence' one might expect that Powell would think twice before attempting to play the same game again. After all, he himself had to admit later that his information was incorrect. But no. Here he was again just a few days ago, showing aerial photographs of a location in Iran and accusing the Iranian government of developing weapons of mass destruction, something the Iranians have repeatedly denied. USA Today reports "Powell said the United States wants the U.N. Security Council to impose economic, political and/or diplomatic sanctions against Iran because of steps he believes Iran is taking toward developing nuclear weapons".

Powell's brazenness is however not matched by the head of the Atomic Energy Inspection Agency (IAEA) El Baradei. Speaking with the BBC's diplomatic reporter, El Baradei said that he has not seen an eminent danger from Iran and would prefer to give diplomacy and ratification time to work on the issue.
The director general said that the U.S. policy right now is to send Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, adding that the U.S. representatives are discussing the issue with the IAEA board members.
He said the lessons he had learned from Iraq had taught him to act cautiously with regard to Iran's nuclear program. "I have to rely on facts; I can't speculate; I really
have to walk very surely and steadily," El Baradei said.

Few will deny that El Baradei's position is a reasonable one and one that should be followed. But during the Iraq debate, the IAEA position as well as that of Hans Blick and his UN inspection team was also most reasonable but was nevertheless spurned by the US/British coalition. Only time will tell if the same scenario that unfolded in Iraq will be repeated with respect to Iran.
Powell's move may just be a pre-election ploy that fizzles away in due course. However his first steps are not very promising as they bear great likeness to what transpired with respect to Hussein's Iraq.