The international community is already pressuring Iran to drop its attempt to refine uranium, but the leaked cables published Sunday by world newspapers show that behind the scenes world leaders are fearful and pessimistic.

From the first memos released, it was learned that:

-- Israel believes US President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran is doomed to failure and that time is running out before military action will need to be tabled if Tehran is not to get a nuclear bomb.

-- Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz has "repeatedly" urged his US allies to take military action against Tehran's nuclear programme and urged them to "cut off the head of the snake".

-- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's top diplomatic adviser told senior US officials: "The current Iranian regime is effectively a fascist state and the time has come to decide on next steps."

Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is peaceful, and has relied on Russia and China -- which depends on Iranian oil shipments -- to slow the tempo of diplomatic progress towards tougher sanctions.

But international concern is building. Traditional foes such as Israel and the Arab states share the West's concerns about Tehran, and Russia has begun to harden its stance against its former ally.

A leaked memo from November 2009 on a meeting between senior Israeli and US military offcials, quotes Israeli defence ministry director Amos Gilad describing Tehran's alleged plans as "intolerable".

During the meeting, an agent of Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence service said Iran was playing for time to "avoid sanctions while pursuing its strategic objective to obtain a military nuclear capability.

"From Mossad's perspective, there is no reason to believe Iran will do anything but use negotiations to stall for time so that by 2010-2011, Iran will have the technological capability to build a nuclear weapon," he said.

And in June 2009, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned US lawmakers the West had only until the end of 2010 to find a way to halt the Iranian nuclear programme or face a Middle East arms race.

"Barak estimated a window between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable," he said, according to one of the leaked cables on the website of the Guardian.

"After that, he said, any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

According to another leaked US cable, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah made an even blunter plea during an April 2008 meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Petraeus.

"He told you to 'cut off the head of the snake'," Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, told the US embassy in Riyadh.

"The King, Foreign Minister, (intelligence chief) Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq," the memo said.

"The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program."

Meanwhile, Sarkozy's diplomatic adviser Jean-David Levitte warned that Iran's response to US President Barack Obama's bid to engage it on dialogue over the future of its alleged nuclear weapons programme was a "farce".

"The current Iranian regime is effectively a fascist state and the time has come to decide on next steps," Levitte warned, according to an account of his meeting with US Secretary of State Philip Gordon on September 16, 2009.

Levitte also expressed concern that Israel might take unilateral military action to hit Iranian nuclear facilities, and reported that he had warned China that such a strike would trigger a global fuel crisis.

Adding to the concern, the leaks also show US intelligence believes Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea capable of striking Europe as far as Berlin, according to documents cited by the New York Times.

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