President Joe Biden has been given a sinister warning over Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Ex-UN weapons inspector David Albright said the Iran could be led into thinking that building nuclear warheads is their "best way out."
It comes after three US soldiers were killed by a 'kamikaze' drone. Iran has been blamed for enabling groups attacking the US.
A spokesperson from the Pentagon said the latest attack carried the "footprints" of Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah.
Biden has been urged not to launch any direct strikes on Iran to avert a wider conflict
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Albright said: "You certainly don’t want to attack Iran now by any means, but you do need to retaliate.
"Certainly, any retaliation should be directed at the group, with a message to Iran: ‘Control your proxies.’ One of the reasons to do that is you don’t want Iran to feel it’s being backed into a corner where it feels that building nuclear weapons is its best way out.
"Iran has quite a nuclear weapons capability that they’ve put together over the last 20-something years."
Albright, has previously claimed that Iran is just five months away from building 12 nuclear weapons, agreed it was important that the US sent a "clear message" by targeting the militants who were responsible for killings.
However, he urged Biden not to launch any direct strikes on Iran to avert a wider conflict amid heightened tensions following the kamikaze attack.
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Albright said Iran has "quite a nuclear weapons capability"
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He added: "It was expected that at some point one of these kamikaze drones was going to kill Americans.
"They carry quite a bit of high explosives and they’re pre-programmed to hit stationary targets, so they can hit pretty precisely a military base. And Iran knows the US will retaliate."
"They’re pretty effective drones, they’re not fast. I’m sure the ones they copied probably had a jet engine, but the ones they’ve reverse-engineered ended up having a propeller.
"It’s well-documented that the engine sounds like a lawnmower. But it has a very good guidance system and an anti-jamming system too. So it can often reach the target."
"They can be shot down, and they often are, but as this case shows, they can also get through.
"Typically, when they’ve been launched in Ukraine, they’re launched in barrages, in the hope that ten percent or 20 percent will hit their targets."
US troops have been attacked over 150 times in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, as well as on warships in the Red Sea, where Houthi fighters in Yemen have been firing drones and missiles at them.
The attacks are piling political pressure on President Joe Biden to deal a blow directly against Iran, a step he has been reluctant to take out of fear of igniting a broader war.
