Israel's president Shimon Peres described the Iranian government as a "fanatic regime" that sponsors international terrorism.
Israeli president Shimon Peres called Iran a threat to the entire world in a speech in Hebrew to Germany's parliament on International Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday and warned against the perils of procrastination.
Peres described the Iranian government as a "fanatic regime" that sponsors international terrorism. Drawing applause from the 622 deputies, he said Tehran's nuclear programme "threatens destruction" and represents "a danger to the entire world".
Peres spoke to the German parliament on the day marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, hailing Germany's close post-war ties with the Jewish state and using the address to take aim at Tehran.
"Like our neighbours, we identify with the millions of Iranians who revolt against dictatorship and violence," he said.
He departing from his text to praise Berlin for its stance on Iran, whose president has called for Israel's destruction.
"We are encouraged by the fact that the new Germany has taken a determined and clear stand on this issue," Peres said.
Germany is one of six world powers seeking to convince Iran to suspend its nuclear work. Western nations suspect Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. It argues its nuclear activity is for civilian purposes.
Iran has ignored US president Barack Obama's end-2009 deadline to respond to an offer from world powers of economic and political incentives in exchange for halting its uranium enrichment programme.
Merkel said on Tuesday Iran was running out of time if it wanted to avoid further sanctions. Peres praised Merkel for telling the US Congress last year that an attack on Israel was tantamount to an attack on Germany.
Peres, the third Israeli president to speak to parliament, recalled the horrors of the Holocaust in the speech broadcast on national television and how his grandfather was burned to death in a Belarus synagogue that the Nazis locked from the outside.
"This day not only represents a memorial day for the victims, not only the pangs of conscience of humankind in the face of the incomprehensible atrocity that took place, but also of the tragedy that derived from the procrastination in taking action," said Peres, 86.
"Never again ignore blood-thirsty dictators, hiding behind demagogical masks, who utter murderous slogans," he added.
"The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass-destruction, which are held by irresponsible hands, by irrational thinking and in an untruthful language," he said.
Peres, a Nobel peace prize winner for his role in reaching interim peace deals with the Palestinians, was a key figure in the establishment of Israel's top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the 1960s. Israel is widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power.
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