Israel’s defence minister warned Iran on Thursday against rejecting a US proposal focused on renouncing “nuclear armament” and vowed to stage “even more painful” strikes on new targets if it did so.

“Iran is standing at a historic crossroads: one path is renouncing the ways of terror and nuclear armament… in line with the US proposal, the other leads to an abyss,” Israel Katz said.

“If the Iranian regime chooses the second path, it will quickly discover there are even more painful targets than those we have already struck,” he said.