Benjamin Netanyahu warns future of world at stake over Iran's nuclear programme "Red lines don't lead to war, red lines prevent war," he said. Nothing could imperil the world more than a nuclear-armed Iran. Mr Netanyahu said Iran had completed the first stage of uranium enrichment. Iran is 70 per cent of the way there and ... well into the second stage. By next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage," he said. From there it is only a few more weeks before they have enriched enough for a bomb. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that time is running out to stop the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear power and the threat of force must be seriously considered. "I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down - and it will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy," he said. "The only way you can credibly prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is to prevent them from enriching enough uranium," he added. Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks suggesting that if Iran's uranium enrichment programme continues, it may soon stage a unilateral military strike, flouting even American wishes. The Obama administration has urgently sought to hold off Israeli military action, which would likely result in the US being pulled into a conflict and cause region-wide mayhem on the eve of American elections, which are on Nov 6. Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, citing Iranian denials of the Holocaust, its calls for Israel's destruction, its development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state and its support for hostile Arab militant groups. "Given this record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons, just imagine Iranian aggression with nuclear weapons," Mr Netanyahu said. "To understand what the world would be like with a nuclear armed Iran, just imagine the world with a nuclear armed al-Qaeda," he added. Mr Netanyahu's overarching emphasis on a military response to the Iranian nuclear threat was however undermined by his own foreign ministry. A confidential report leaked just hours before Mr Netanyahu's address at the UN concluded that sanctions on Iran were having a much more devastating effect than previously thought. Its findings run counter to the Israeli prime minister's increasingly strident insistence that sanctions are having a limited affect, leaving the military option as the only viable way to force Iran to surrender its nuclear ambitions. The document concluded that Western sanctions had brought enormous pressure to bear on the Iranian regime and triggered such widespread discontent in Iran that the government was now vulnerable to a popular revolt. It also noted that Iranian energy exports had fallen by 50 per cent since the imposition of a European Union oil embargo earlier this year.