Iran will promise the United Nations that it will not seek to create nuclear weapons, an Iranian news agency has claimed.

The Mehr news agency, which the Associated Press terms a “semi-official” news agency, reportedly quoted Vice - President Mohammed Reza Rahimi as saying: "Iran plans to declare in the UN that it will never go after nuclear bombs.” He did not, however, say when such a promise would be made.

This announcement comes at the same time that a top US intelligence official said Iran could not make a nuclear bomb without the international community finding out about it.

National Intelligence director James Clapper said that Tehran was developing its nuclear capabilities but that the country “could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of weapons-grade uranium before this activity is discovered.”

Also on Tuesday Israeli President Shimon Peres told the European Parliament that the Iranian regime was "the greatest danger to peace in the world.

"Nobody threatens Iran," he said. "Iran threatens others."