The international community should use “military force” if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid told the United Nations on Thursday as he reiterated his support for the creation of a “peaceful” Palestinian state.

Israel has conducted an intense diplomatic offensive in recent months to try to persuade the United States and key European powers such as Britain, France and Germany not to renew the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Over the past 10 days, various officials have suggested the deal – which then-US President Donald Trump scrapped in 2018 – may not be renewed until at least mid-November, a deadline Lapid has tried to push the West into theirs Negotiations dictate tougher action.

“The only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to put a credible military threat on the table,” Lapid said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

Only then can a “longer and stronger deal with them” be negotiated.

“Iran needs to be made clear that if it goes ahead with its nuclear program, the world will respond not with words but with military force,” he added.

And he made no secret of the fact that Israel itself would be ready to step in if it felt threatened.

“We will do whatever is necessary,” he said. “Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.”

From the General Assembly podium, Lapid accused Tehran’s leadership of conducting an “orchestra of hatred” against Jews and said Iranian ideologues “hate and kill Muslims who think differently, like Salman Rushdie and Mahsa Amini,” the woman whose deaths after her arrest by Iran’s moral policy has sparked widespread protests there.

Israel, which considers Iran its arch-enemy, also accuses Tehran of funding armed movements such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas.

Despite existing “obstacles,” he said, “a two-state, two-people agreement with the Palestinians is what is right for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy, and for the future of our children.”

Lapid, who is running in the November 1 general election, said a large majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, “and I’m one of them.”

“We have only one condition: that any future Palestinian state be peaceful,” said Lapid, whose UN speech was leaked in Israel and has already been criticized by his political rivals.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled since 2014.

The current strategy of the Lapid government is to try to support the Palestinian economy but without starting a peace process with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Friday.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967 and has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory controlled by the Islamists Hamas, since 2007.

Since 2008, Hamas and Israel have fought four wars in which Islamic Jihad, the second largest armed Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, has also taken part.

“Put down your arms and prove that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will not take over the Palestinian state you want to create,” Lapid said.

“Put down your arms and there will be peace.”