N-armed Iran equals '50 N Koreas'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo / AP

A nuclear-armed Iran would be as dangerous as "50 North Koreas" and the country's new President is trying to "fool the world", Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.

Delivering a trenchant address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Israeli Prime Minister rounded on President Hassan Rouhani.

Iran's new leader has offered "peace and friendship" to America and held out the prospect of settling the confrontation over his country's nuclear ambitions, but Netanyahu recalled how North Korea agreed in 2005 to freeze its nuclear programme then a year later exploded its first nuclear weapons device. "Yet as dangerous as a nuclear-armed North Korea is, it pales in comparison to the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran," Netanyahu added.

An Iran with nuclear weapons would disrupt global energy supplies and turn the "most unstable part of the planet into a nuclear tinderbox", predicted Netanyahu. "A nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East would not be another North Korea. It would be another 50 North Koreas."

The "lesson of history" was that Iran's rhetorical threats against Israel and the West should be taken seriously. Any solution must compel Iran to stop enriching uranium, export its entire stockpile of this material and dismantle all the most important nuclear facilities, he demanded.

Netanyahu cautioned against allowing Iran to retain even a "residual" capacity to enrich uranium, a process that could be used to make fuel for nuclear power stations, which Tehran says is the only goal, or a nuclear weapon core.

"Israel will never acquiesce to nuclear arms in the hands of a rogue regime which repeatedly threatens to wipe us off the map. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. But, in standing alone, Israel will know that it is defending many, many others," said Netanyahu.

He recalled how Iranian-sponsored terrorists destroyed a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people, and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American soldiers in 1996.

"Are we to believe that Rouhani, the national security adviser of Iran at the time, knew nothing about these attacks?" asked Netanyahu. "Of course he did."

Saying that Rouhani negotiated with the West while expanding Iran's nuclear facilities a decade ago, Netanyahu added: "He fooled the world once, now he thinks he can fool it again."

Khodadad Seifi, a deputy ambassador at Iran's UN mission, dismissed Netanyahu's remarks as "inflammatory" and "sabre rattling".

Western diplomats believe privately that Netanyahu's definition of an acceptable agreement with Iran is unrealistic. One described his conditions as an "unconditional surrender".