The European Jewish Congress president has urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to up the ante on Iran.

“The gong has sounded for the last round for Iran,” Moshe Kantor said in an interview published Wednesday in the German newspaper the “Rheinischen Post.” His remarks appeared after Merkel received the annual Leo Baeck Award from the German Jewish community on Nov. 6. In her speech accepting the award, Merkel announced that she would support tougher sanctions to press Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions.

But Kantor said that talks had run their course and that, in keeping with UN procedures, military sanctions must follow “if economic sanctions are ineffective.”

Still, he said he hoped that Europe, Russia and the United States would manage together to press Iran to drop its nuclear program without resorting to force.