WASHINGTON/TEHRAN (AFP) - Israel has eight days to launch a military strike against Irans Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said. Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russias help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plants core. At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians. Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once theyre in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it, Bolton told Fox Business Network. So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days. Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the US in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor. But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was sceptical. I dont think so, Im afraid that theyve lost this opportunity, he said. The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticised Russias role in the development of the plant, saying the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle. The idea of being able to stick a thumb in Americas eye always figures prominently in Moscow, he added. Dismissing the possibilities of such an attack on its first nuclear power plant from its arch-foes, Iran warned that any strike would amount to an international crime, as the countdown started for the launch of the Russian-built facility. The consequences of this will not be limited to the hosting country but will have a global aftermath, Irans nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the state IRNA news agency. Irans foreign ministry spokesman dismissed a possible Israeli attack on the Bushehr plant. These threats had become repetitive and lost their meaning, Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday. According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences, he said.