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Gordon Brown has challenged Iran to join a new international effort to combat climate change by expanding peaceful nuclear energy.
In a keynote speech, the prime minister is increasing the pressure on Iran to abandon its concealment of nuclear activities.
Brown suggested that the country should take up an offer to help develop a civil nuclear power programme instead.
The premier also warned that the world will not succeed in tackling climate change "without far wider use of civil nuclear power".
And Brown called for 32 new power plants to open around the globe.
"We have to create a new international system to help non-nuclear states acquire the new sources of energy they need," he said.
"Because - whether we like it or not - we will not meet the challenges of climate change without the far wider use of civil nuclear power."
And on Iran, Brown said: "Let me be unequivocal. Iran has the same absolute right to a peaceful civil nuclear programme as any other country.
"Indeed the UK and international community stand ready to help Iran achieve it.
"But let me be equally clear that Iran's current nuclear programme is unacceptable. Iran has concealed nuclear activities, refused to cooperate with the IAEA, and flouted UN Security Council resolutions.
"Its refusal to play by the rules leads us to view its nuclear programme as a critical proliferation threat.
"Iran therefore faces a clear choice continue in this way and face further and tougher sanctions, or change to a UN overseen civil nuclear energy programme that will bring the greatest benefits to its citizens."
The prime minister expressed his desire for Iran to make the "right choice".
"I urge Iran, once again, to work with us rather than against us on this," he said.
"The opportunity to do so remains on the table, the choice is theirs to make"
And defence secretary John Hutton has told the BBC that the prime minister's speech was an "invitation" to Iran to come back to international law with its civil nuclear power programme.
He warned that nuclear weapons proliferation was perhaps the "greatest security challenge that the world faces at the moment".
Hutton said that Iran continues "to develop its nuclear programme in a way that contravenes five UN Security Council resolutions".
"We are entitled to face it as a nuclear threat," he said. "The real concern would be if there was to be development of highly enriched uranium.
"They haven't actually at the moment got a civil nuclear power reactor. So people are right to raise their eyebrows and more about their nuclear enrichment programme."
He described Brown's offer for negotiation with Iran as "unprecedented".
Under the offer, Iran could be supplied with the fuel needed to run its civil nuclear power proliferation programme.
Hutton explained: "If they don't do that, and they continue to develop their civil power programme in the way that they are, I think we and others are entitled to regard this as a very serious proliferation threat and that of course would be immensely destabilising for the region and, indeed, the world."
"The consequences of that are really, pretty too frightful to think about," he added.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd