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© unknownUS Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich
US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has called for a military strike against Iran's refineries to stop the country's peaceful nuclear program.

The US should bomb Iran's refineries "as a last recourse," Gingrich said earlier in a 2012 presidential debate in Washington.

The former House speaker opined that the US could break Iran within a year with "cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have."

His hawkish comments came as Washington and its allies are putting pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program, imposing unilateral sanctions on the country following the November 8 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In an earlier presidential debate earlier this month, Gingrich advocated increased covert terrorism against Iran.

He suggested employing "maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable."

The calls for assassination and terrorist acts come as Iran has lost a number of its scientists to terrorism in recent years. Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Masoud Ali-Mohammadi were killed in separate bombing attacks last year.

Western countries have used the allegation that Tehran is pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program as a pretext to impose sanctions on the country as well as to call for an attack.

Iran says that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country.

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has said that Iranian armed forces will pound all of Israel with thousands of missiles following threats by officials in Tel Aviv.