Stepping up pressure on Iran, US Vice-President Dick Cheney today refused to rule out the use of force to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“It would be a serious mistake if a nation like Iran were to become a nuclear power,” Cheney warned in a press conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. “All options are still on the table.”

Cheney said the US was working with it allies to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons programmes, and that it was Washington’s preference for that to happen peacefully.

“We worked with the European community and the U N to .... persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference,” Cheney said. However, he added: “The next step toward getting Iran to abandon its nuclear programmes is still being debated,”.

“I can’t think of a country whose influence and potential clout would be more enhanced in that part of the world than Iran’s could be, if there were to be a coalition defeat in Iraq,” said Australian Prime Minister Howard.

In an interview with an Australian newspaper, Cheney said Iran has sponsored terrorism in West Asia, and he accused Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of espousing an “apocalyptic philosophy” and making “threatening noises about Israel and the US and others”.

He said Iran was a sponsor of terrorism, especially through Hizbollah. However, the US did not believe Iran possessed any nuclear weapons as yet.

“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world. “Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”

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