UNITED NATIONS – Iran yesterday increased the heat of the dispute over its development of nuclear weapons by threatening to attack Israel if America commits any “evil” act around the world.

And as the U.N. Security Council begins contemplating how to counter the Iranian defiance, Ambassador John Bolton told Congress yesterday that Washington may bypass Turtle Bay and assemble like-minded countries to impose sanctions on the mullah regime.

The latest Iranian threat came as Israel marked its memorial day for war victims yesterday on the eve if its Independence Day celebrations. “We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel,” the Revolutionary Guards commander, Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani, said, according to the Iranian news agency ISNA.

The Revolutionary Guards were established after Ayatollah Khomeinei came to power in the late 1970s, becoming Iran’s elite fighting unit. According to Israeli intelligence reports, Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers are stationed at Hezbollah posts in southern Lebanon, where the terrorist organization has amassed rockets that can reach major Israeli urban centers.

Secretary-General Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said yesterday the United Nations advises all sides to “lower the rhetoric and focus on the diplomatic discussions.” But Israel believes the Iranian threats are beyond rhetoric.

“You have to listen to the Iranians very carefully, because they mean what they say,” Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Daniel Carmon, told The New York Sun yesterday. “This is not only about Israel. The Iranians endanger the whole world.”

The Security Council is expected to begin consultations today on its response to Iran’s failure to accede to a request last month to open its nuclear installation to inspections and to suspend uranium enrichment activity. The process is expected to come to a head at a meeting of top foreign ministers in New York next Tuesday.

America and its European allies plan to circulate a resolution soon that would replace the call for Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency with a mandatory resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which provides for enforcement measures, including sanctions or even military action. China and Russia oppose such measures.

“While it would be desirable to have a unanimous Security Council when we adopt this resolution under Chapter 7,” Mr. Bolton told the House of Representatives’ Government Reform Subcommittee, “it’s not impossible that we would proceed without them.”

One option, he said, is that “if for whatever reason the council couldn’t fulfill its responsibilities, then I think it would be incumbent on us, and I’m sure we would press ahead to ask other countries or other groups of countries to impose those sanctions.”

Political directors of foreign ministries met in Paris yesterday to discuss the Iranian situation. The Russians “have to stop the arm sales” to Iran, the undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said after the conclusion of the meeting, according to Fox News.

Iranian officials claim to have guarantees from Russia and China to prevent the council from authorizing any punitive measures. “The thing these two countries have officially told us and expressed in diplomatic negotiations is their opposition to sanctions and military attacks,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Iranian newspaper Kayhan.

China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, last week said Beijing is opposed to a Chapter 7 resolution. One council diplomat, however, predicted that China and Russia, as well as the Arab member on the council, Qatar, will most likely abstain at this stage of the diplomacy, while sanctions are only contemplated. They will reserve diplomatic capital for the next confrontation, when actual sanctions are offered, the diplomat said.

Foreign ministers of the five veto wielding members of the council and Germany might meet to discuss Iran next Tuesday in New York, where two of them, Secretary of State Rice and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, are due for a meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet, a European diplomat told the Sun yesterday. Attendance at the meeting, said the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, has not yet been confirmed by all the ministers.

The Quartet, which includes America, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, was formed after a peace plan between Israel and Palestinian Arabs, known as the road map, was proposed by the Bush administration and endorsed by the Security Council.