"If Iran continues its program to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it," Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz told Yediot Ahronot, Israel's largest mass-circulation daily. "The window of opportunity has closed. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear program."

Mofaz's threat is one of the most explicit made against the Islamic Republic of Iran by a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Cabinet.

It has significant political resonance in Israel amid talk that Mofaz has begun jockeying to replace Olmert, who is embroiled in a corruption probe, as the ruling Kadima Party's leader and prime minister.