Israel calls for speedy Iran sanctions, after IAEA report

Feb 19, 2010, 15:06 GMT

Jerusalem - Israel Friday called for heavy sanctions against Iran 'at the earliest opportunity' after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said in a report that there was evidence that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons.

The IAEA report related in a 'sharp and clear' manner to the 'military aspects of Iran's nuclear programme,' the Foreign Ministry said in a statement sent to journalists.

Iran, it said, continued to 'systematically violate' UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions.

'The international community and its institutions must impose effective sanctions on Iran at the earliest opportunity, which would illustrate to it the heavy price it will pay if it continues to advance its nuclear programme,' the ministry said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres earlier referred to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his regime as a 'hangman' and a 'dictator' and said the world should condemn him as such.

'I think moral sanctions are more important than economic sanctions, to call a hangman a hangman, to call a dictator a dictator, a person who hangs people in the street, who shoots unarmed demonstrators, who calls for the destruction of a country, and who denies the Holocaust,' he told a conference in Jerusalem for American Jewish community leaders Friday.

'The problem is not really the strength of the bomb, but the nature of the (Iranian) system, of the regime,' said Peres.

'This is the real confrontation of our time,' he added. 'The real story is not who has bombs, but who has hangmen.'