AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
JERUSALEM: An Israeli government committee has warned that Iran's nuclear programme is likely to encourage other countries in the Middle East to develop atomic weapons, a report said on Monday.
President Moshe Katzav, meanwhile, called for the international community to take action against Iran.
“The free world must not stay idle in the face of countries which call for the destruction of Israel and want to possess a nuclear weapon,” he said at a ceremony to mark the start of Holocaust Day.
The government committee, headed by former finance minister Dan Meridor, recommended in a 250-page classified report that Israel maintain its policy of nuclear ambiguity under which the Jewish state refuses to confirm whether it possesses atomic weapons, according to the Haaretz daily.
Haaretz said that an entire chapter had been devoted to the consequences of Tehran managing to develop nuclear weapons.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's hardline resident, announced earlier this month that scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel although Tehran insists its programme is only designed to meet energy needs.
Meridor's committee had concluded that “Iran is capable of kindling the entire Middle East and constitutes an existential threat to Israel,” said Haaretz.
“The committee finds that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, other Muslim, Middle Eastern countries, will try to follow suit.”
Israel is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal of an estimated 200 warheads, making it the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz on Monday said that Ahmadinejad was the world's most dangerous leader since Adolf Hitler and that Israel was now under an existential threat from Iran.
“Iran is an existential threat to Israel because of its radical leadership, the network of radical groups it supports and its desire to reach nuclear capability,” Mofaz said during the inauguration ceremony of an Iranian research centre at Tel Aviv University.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that while Israel hopes for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis, it was “prepared for any eventuality and in order to not make things easier for the Iranians.”
In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's French-built Osirak nuclear reactor.
On Monday, Ahmadinejad dismissed a UN Security Council call for the Islamic republic to freeze sensitive nuclear work by the end of this week and warned that Iran could quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
