Israelis urge EU to get tougher on Iran

By Paul Taylor

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Senior Israeli officials are touring Europe this week to raise the alarm about Iran's accelerating nuclear programme and urge EU governments to take tougher sanctions without waiting for the United Nations.

"We are concerned that people in Europe are not aware of the Iranian threat. There is little discussion about it," one of the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

While European Union policymakers are aware of the strategic implications if Iran achieves a nuclear capability, the official said the European public and media seemed largely oblivious.

Israel, itself widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, argues that a nuclear Iran would make the Middle East and the world more dangerous and unpredictable because of the nature of the Islamic Republic's leaders and their support for militant groups in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.

The Israelis, visiting Brussels, Berlin, Vienna and Rome on this trip, are carrying a list of suggested political and commercial measures they want the Europeans to take to increase pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.

They range from declaring an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organisation, as the United States has done, to ending export credits and foreign trade insurance for business with Iran, a move the EU is debating.

Other steps the Israelis say would hit key forces in Tehran include banning all dealings with Iran's revolutionary economic foundations, which fund the clerical leadership, barring the sale of spare parts for oil refineries and prohibiting insurance for merchant vessels entering Iranian ports.

The officials also want the Europeans to end the sale of tunnelling and mining equipment, which they say Iran is using to conceal and protect its nuclear facilities deep underground.