"This is a brutal regime that is racing ahead with its nuclear programme because it doesn't see a clear red line from the international community," Netanyahu said at a meeting with Israeli and US servicemen wounded in conflict.

"And it doesn't see the necessary resolve and determination from the international community. The greater the resolve and the clearer the red line, the less likely we'll have conflict," he said.

Media reports in Israel indicated that Netanyahu is now trying to ease tensions with US President Barack Obama, whom he has been pressing to establish a threshold for military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

According to the reports, tensions have grown in recent days over Netanyahu's threat of an Israeli raid on Iranian nuclear facilities without White House approval.

On Sunday, Netanyahu lamented the absence of a "clear red line" in response to the Iranian nuclear issue, in a statement seen as thinly veiled criticism of the US president.

"I think that we should speak the truth -- the international community is not drawing a clear red line for Iran," Netanyahu said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.

"Iran doesn't see determination from the international community to stop its nuclear programme," he added.

According to Israeli television, his message explained a report published Monday in the New York Times that said the Obama administration was taking "a range of steps short of war to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.

Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran's uranium enrichment has raised international suspicion, although Tehran says it is for peaceful purposes.

The measures are designed to force Tehran to negotiate more seriously over its nuclear program and offer Israeli officials a credible alternative to a military strike on the Islamic state, the paper said.

"The Obama administration is moving ahead with a range of steps short of war that it hopes will forestall an Israeli attack, while forcing the Iranians to take more seriously negotiations that are all but stalemated," it said.

Citing unnamed military officials, the paper said the United States and more than 25 other countries will this month hold the largest-ever mine-sweeping exercise in the Gulf in what is seen as a bid to prevent Iran from trying to block oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington is also completing a new radar system in Qatar that would combine with radars already in place in Israel and Turkey to form a broad arc of antimissile coverage, the report said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said last week that Iran has doubled its uranium enrichment capacity at the underground Fordo facility in spite of UN Security Council resolutions, sanctions and talk of Israeli military action.

The UN nuclear watchdog also said its ability to inspect the Parchin military base, where it suspects Iran conducted nuclear weapons research in the past, has been "significantly hampered" by a suspected clean-up.

With these developments in mind, the US and Israeli intelligence agencies are debating possible successors to "Olympic Games," the covert cyberoperation that infected Iran's nuclear centrifuges with a computer virus and sent them spinning out of control, The Times said.

The Obama administration hopes that ramping up measures on Tehran will give Israel a way to back off from a military attack, which would almost certainly unleash a new conflict in the Middle East, the paper reported.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the international community of failing to draw a "clear red line" for Iran over its nuclear program.

"Iran doesn't see determination from the international community to stop its nuclear program," he said.