Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak is accusing former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former chiefs of intelligence community of undermining the government's efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program.

"The Olmert gang is traveling the world and saying things that weaken Israel's significant accomplishment of turning the Iranian issue into an important and urgent one -- not only to Israel but to the world," Barak said in an interview with the Yisrael Hayom daily.

"It isn't hard to see that this is only serving Iran," he said, according to the interview released on Thursday.

Speaking during a conference in New York on Sunday, Olmert and former Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan defended the former head of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, whose criticism of Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the Iranian issue preoccupied local media outlets in recent days.

Diskin, who stepped down from Shin Bet's helm a year ago, has claimed that an Israeli military strike would only accelerate Tehran's efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon. His criticism echoed that of Dagan, who last year called the idea of a pre-emptive Israeli strike "stupid."

However, Barak rebuked Diskin for downplaying the Iranian threat, saying "it is not even his field of expertise or his responsibility, and the government is the one that has to make decisions."

Olmert, who served as Israel's prime minister from 2006 to 2009, later on Thursday responded to Barak's comments, predicting that the defense minister's political career would soon end.