By John Davison
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Iran's atomic drive "will
be stopped", a day after an interim agreement bringing sanctions relief
for Tehran took effect.
"Iran's
military nuclear programme must be stopped, and Iran's military nuclear
programme will be stopped," Netanyahu said at a joint news conference
with his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper, without saying how.
Israel
has long warned that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to
the Jewish state, and has refused to rule out a military strike to
prevent that from happening.
Netanyahu
fought a major diplomatic campaign against the so-called Geneva
Agreement which was hammered out in November between world powers and
Iran, and on Monday he said the agreement would not succeed in stopping
Tehran.
"The interim agreement
which went into force today does not prevent Iran from realising its
intention to develop nuclear weapons," he told the Israeli parliament.
His remarks came just hours after
the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran had halted production of 20
percent enriched uranium, marking the entry into force of the landmark
deal with the P5+1 group of world powers.
The international community
also kept its part of the deal, with both the European Union and United
States separately announcing they were easing crippling sanctions on
Iran.
The deal, which was
signed in Geneva, came about after nearly a decade of failed
negotiations over its disputed nuclear programme, which the West
believes is a front for building a military capability.
Tehran has denied the charge.
"A
nuclear armed Iran would not just endanger Israel -- it would threaten
the peace and security of our region," Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
"It would give Iran's terrorist proxies a nuclear umbrella.
"It
would launch a multilateral nuclear arms race in the Middle East, it
could turn the Middle East into a nuclear tinderbox," he said. 
Netanyahu said the Iran nuclear
issue, and the rise of Islamism across the Middle East, had united
Israel and many Arab countries in their efforts to face these "twin
challenges".
"Iran's pursuit
of nuclear weapons and the aggressive designs of the Muslim Brotherhood
is what shapes many of the Arab world's leading countries today," he
said.
"In meeting those twin
challenges, these countries do not see Israel as their enemy but as
being on the same side of a difficult conflict," he said.
Commentators
say the diplomatic effect of direct talks between Israel's sworn enemy
Iran and Western powers could see the Jewish state finding more in
common with traditional Arab allies of the US, particularly Sunni Gulf
kingdom Saudi Arabia.
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