"Perhaps it is time to recognize Iran as a nuclear power, which the corresponding assignment of obligations to enter international agreements," said Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor, a Geneva-based billionaire businessman who chairs the Russian Jewish Congress and the European Jewish Congress.
He said that with such status, entirely different "containment mechanisms" could be used with Iran.
Kantor chaired the organizing committee for the Luxembourg Conference for the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe last year.
Iran has so far defied three rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions over its nuclear program, which many Western nations fear is a cover for a weapons program.
A Russian expert suggested on Monday that Iran was on the verge of creating long-range missiles.
"At present they have missiles with a range of over 2,000 kilometers," said Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a leading research associate at the Russian Academy of Sciences World Economics and International Relations Institute.
He said there are indications that Iran could create missiles with a range of up to 6,000 kilometers in the very near future.
"I share these concerns, and knowing the technological cycle, I can presume that such missiles could be built in the foreseeable future," he said.
