Wash. Times editorial, Limbaugh repeated Drudge's false claim that IAEA's ElBaradei said Iran only a "few months" from nuclear weapons

On December 8, a Washington Times editorial and nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh repeated a distortion of recent comments by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Mohamed ElBaradei regarding how soon Iran might have a nuclear weapon. The editorial claimed that ElBaradei had said that "[i]f Iran has resumed its uranium enrichment program, it will take only 'a few months' before it had a nuclear bomb." Similarly Limbaugh asserted that "according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, good, old Mohamed ElBaradei, [Iran is] ... months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon." But as Media Matters for America documented when the Drudge Report website made the same claim in a December 5 post linking to an article in The Jerusalem Post, ElBaradei's words were taken out of context. He stated that Iran may be able to produce a nuclear weapon "a few months" after it becomes capable of enriching uranium to a grade suitable for making weapons. According to the IAEA and news reports on U.S. intelligence, Iran is at least two years away from being able to enrich uranium on its own.
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