The world needs to get ready to use military force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, the former head of the Israeli intelligence service said Tuesday in Berlin.

Danny Yatom, who headed Mossad from 1996-98, said the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran poses the greatest threat to global security, "even more so than international terrorism."

The Western sanctions -- the third wave -- will not stop Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Yatom said at a security conference Tuesday in Berlin.

That's why "the entire world should take military action to prevent Iran from getting a bomb," he said at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

Years of diplomatic efforts have failed to convince Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which Israel and the West believe is part of a nuclear weapons program. Tehran denies the charge, arguing it develops nuclear for peaceful energy purposes.

Israel has discussed a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities -- a plan that garnered little support from the West.

European officials point to the assumption that Iran's secret nuclear facilities are difficult to bomb and that a first strike would fuel anger and terrorism across the Arabic world, keeping in mind the politically disastrous campaign in Iraq that was based on bogus intelligence.

Yatom admitted that the consequences of a military strike would be grave, with terror counterattacks likely, but not as terrible as a nuclear-armed Iran.

Such an Iran "is the most dangerous near-future threat to the well-being of the world and the very existence of Israel," he said. "But this is not a sole Israeli problem but rather one of the entire world. The Iranian issue carries an explosive combination of a rogue regime that thinks it has a direct telephone line to God … with missiles that cover some 1,500 miles."

Moreover, Iran is eager to acquire long-range missiles with a distance of nearly 2,500 miles -- enough to hit targets all over the world, including in Western Europe, he said. "Now, why would they want that?"

August Hanning, the head of the German intelligence service BND from 1998-2005, reminded Yatom that it was hard to convince officials in Iran, a regional power with a long cultural history, that they can't go nuclear if so many countries in the vicinity -- Israel, India, Pakistan or Russia -- are part of the club themselves.

Yatom replied that of all these countries, only Iran had threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." He added Tehran should not be trusted to only use the weapon as a deterrent because it already "finances, inspires and helps to organize terror attacks all over the world."

The Israeli security expert warned not to wait until it's too late. He told the story of his 1998 meeting with George Tenet, then director of the CIA. During the meeting, Yatom warned Tenet of the threat of Iran and Islamist terrorism.

"He said, 'Danny, you know this is a sole Israeli problem, so you go deal with that.' Only after 9/11 did the Americans realize that this was not the case," Yatom said. "I pray that this story won't be repeated while dealing with Iran."

Yatom has a personal history of combating terrorists. Together with his long-time ally, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Yatom was part of a commando unit that in 1972 freed around 100 hostages held by four Palestinian militants who had hijacked a Sabena passenger jet -- the first successful airplane raid in history.

After he resigned as Mossad chief over a botched assassination attempt on Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan, Yatom became a security adviser to Barak when he was prime minister. From 2003-08, he had a seat in the Knesset before resigning from politics.

earlier related report
'Grim' prospects for crippling UN Iran sanctions: Israel
United Nations (AFP) March 9, 2010 - Israel's UN ambassador on Tuesday said prospects for crippling UN sanctions against Iran were "grim" because Russia and China want to use diplomacy to convince Iran to scale back its nuclear ambitions.

"The chances now seem grim regarding sanctions that will be crippling," Ambassador Gabriela Shalev told reporters here.

She said Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, "are still looking to the diplomatic track" and appear reluctant to back a new round of tough sanctions proposed by Washington and its Western allies.

"The Chinese and the Russians still hope that diplomacy will work. They do not want to inflict any harm on the Iranian people," she added.

Shalev said that if the 15-member council was unable to agree on crippling sanctions, then Israel "will look to the countries themselves" to slap additional bilateral sanctions.

On Monday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom called on the Security Council to impose "crippling" sanctions on Iran over its nuclear defiance.

"The time has come to impose crippling sanctions on the Iranians and I asked to put the 300 leaders of the Revolutionary Guards that are controlling Iran these days on the (UN sanctions) blacklist," he told reporters after meeting with UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

Israel considers Iran its biggest security threat because of comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map and questioning the Holocaust.

Israel is widely reported to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, but it refuses to confirm or deny this, instead pursuing a policy of "nuclear ambiguity."

The UN Security Council has already slapped three rounds of sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment which Israel and the West view as a cover to build nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the charge, saying the program is for peaceful nuclear energy.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have proposed a fourth set of financial sanctions targeting Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, but China has questioned the usefulness of sanctions at this time.

Russia has signaled that it might be willing to back sanctions provided they only target Iran's nuclear proliferation activities.

Shalev said the world was edging closer to "two bad options": Iran continuing to race towards nuclear weapons capacity, which "will put the whole world under the threat of nuclear war," or Tehran being stopped only "by force."

She said the second possibility was currently being discussed by high-ranking US and Israeli political and military leaders, but declined to provide further details.

Brazil and Turkey, two non-permanent members of the Council, have expressed misgivings about new Iran sanctions.

On Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled that Ankara might oppose new punitive measures.

"I don't believe that any further sanctions will yield results," Erdogan told reporters during a visit to Saudi Arabia, adding that two earlier rounds of sanctions "have never yielded results."

Turkey, which has good ties with its neighbour Iran, has offered to host an exchange of Iran's low-enriched uranium (LEU) for 20-percent-enriched uranium supplied by world powers to Tehran as part of a UN-drafted deal.