If Iran succeeds in developing nuclear warheads, it is unlikely to bomb Israel, Israel's defence minister said Thursday, DPA reported.
Ehud Barak, of the Labour Party, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's least hawkish coalition partner, told Haaretz newspaper the Israeli government should not be spreading "panic" about Iran's nuclear programme.
That position seemed to put him out of step with Netanyahu, the Israeli daily said.
Asked whether he thought Iran would drop an atom bomb on Israel, the defence minister said: "Not on us and not on any other neighbour."
"I don't think in terms of panic," he added. "We are still the most powerful in the Middle East."
In the interview granted ahead of Israel's Independence Day next week, Barak predicted the regime in Tehran too could collapse.
"I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of the dictatorships in the Arab world, including the Iranian one," he said.
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