Article from: Agence France-Presse September 02, 2006 04:43am

ISRAEL should consider a military option to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the former head of the Mossad intelligence service said overnight.

"Israel should prepare itself for the worst of possibilities, even for a military option," Shavtain Shavit said on public television, pointing out that efforts by world powers to get Iran to stop enriching uranium have not succeeded.

He said Iran has a "regime of fanatics who see it as their duty to exterminate infidels and make the world a Muslim world. The day that they have an atomic weapon and their finger on the trigger, the world will be completely different."

Israel, along with the United States and other Western powers, accuses Iran of using its civil atomic energy program as a cover for developing the bomb, a charge Tehran roundly denies.

Israel is widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons, although it has never confirmed or denied it holds such an arsenal.

Iran insists it is exercising a right to develop civilian atomic energy, and has refused to comply with a UN Security Council resolution that gave it an August 31 deadline to halt enrichment of uranium.