Former Israeli premier has criticized hawkish Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for wasting billions of shekels for preparing futile war plans against Iran.

"In the past two years we have spent more than 11 billion shekels on security hallucinations that were not performed and will not be performed," Ehud Olmert said in a Friday interview with Israeli television network Channel 2 News.

"They scared the world for a year and in the end didn't do anything," charged Olmert, referring to Netanyahu's war rhetoric against Iran's civilian nuclear program during the past months.

He said that the regime's military budget should be cut due to its huge surplus in recent years.

Israel has at times threatened to attack Iran's nuclear facilities based on the unfounded allegation that Iran's nuclear energy program has been diverted towards the production of an atomic bomb.

Iran rejects the allegations against its nuclear energy activities, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Tehran has strongly condemned the "provocative and unjustifiable" war rhetoric by the Israeli regime's officials, saying the Islamic Republic will give a firm response to any aggression.