LONDON, May 26: Former US president Jimmy Carter has said Israel holds at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a US president has publicly acknowledged the Jewish state’s atomic arsenal.

Asked at a news conference at Wales’s Hay literary festival on Sunday how a future US president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Mr Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally.

“The US has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry ... not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks.

While the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is widely assumed, Israeli officials have never admitted their existence and US officials have stuck to that line in public for years.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said Washington should talk directly to Tehran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

Jimmy Carter was president from 1977 to 1981. During that time, he helped negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and concluded a strategic arms agreement with the Soviet Union.—Reuters