Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech will alarm the US, coming days after he declared that Iran had joined the “nuclear club” by successfully enriching uranium. President Bush has stated that the US would use force to protect Israel from being, in the words of President Ahmadinejad last year, “wiped off the face of the map”.

The Iranian leader, appearing at a conference on the Palestinian issue yesterday, said that Israel was “heading towards annihilation”, questioned whether the Holocaust had ever happened, and predicted that the Middle East would “soon be liberated”.

He said that the existence of Israel was a threat to the Islamic world, but added that “the Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm”. Even if the Holocaust were true, he said, “why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed?”

Iran has previously said that it will give money to the Palestinian Authority to make up for the withdrawal of donations by Western nations that object to Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.

On Tuesday, Mr Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium using a battery of 164 centrifuges, a significant step towards the large-scale production of enriched uranium required for either fuelling nuclear reactors or making nuclear weapons.

The US and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear programme secretly to build a weapon. Major-General Amos Yadlin, the Chief of Israeli Intelligence, said that Iran could develop a nuclear bomb “within three years”.

Iran says that it has agreed to increase co-operation with the UN nuclear watchdog but has still refused to halt its uranium enrichment programme.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met Iranian officials in Tehran on Thursday. “I don’t think the issue of enrichment right now, emotional as it is, is urgent,” Mr ElBaradei said. “So, we have ample time to negotiate a settlement by which Iran’s need for nuclear power is assured and the concern of the international community is also put to rest.”

But Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that, although the US remains committed to diplomacy, Iran must agree to stop uranium enrichment before the Security Council takes up the issue at the end of the month or “there will have to be consequences”.

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