The United States should impose sanctions unilaterally against Iran in the same way it acted alone by clamping an embargo on Cuba 50 years ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday.

"We are a little worried by the pace of developments in the international arena," Lieberman told reporters.

"I think that from now on Israel should perhaps change its Iran policy a little, and we should ask the
United States to adopt the Cuban model ... Here the United States alone can do everything in order to stop this (Iranian) program."

The Cuban communist revolution of 1959 frayed ties with the United States. A year later, the Eisenhower administration imposed an embargo on Castro's Cuba, allowing in only food and medicine.

In 1962, the Kennedy administration banned all Cuban imports and re-exports of U.S. products to Cuba from other countries.

Subsequent administrations kept the internationally criticized embargo in force, with occasional measures to ease or tighten it, but the European Union and most other nations have not followed it.

"The Cuban model is very simple. It has already proven its efficacy," Lieberman said.

"And if the United States adopts the legislation and the entire Cuban model toward Iran without awaiting understandings and consensus within the Security Council framework, this would be enough to strangle and bring down the Iranian regime."

An Israeli diplomatic source said Lieberman was proposing the United States shun foreign firms that continue to do business with Iran.

(Reuters)