Israeli military analysts have discovered that Iranian scientists have been working on a new form of plant-based car fuel that has been described as “revolutionary”.

Leading Israeli environmentalist Mordechai Nathansky said the invention could transform transport across the world. Included among the documents seized by Israel from a warehouse in Tehran in April 2018 was a small folder labelled “Tasch”.

The Israeli analysts had ignored the documents, considering they had no connection to Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.

But by chance, one of the analysts, physicist Esther Hamanstein, opened the folder and was astonished by what she saw.

She said: “It was a design for a small hatchback which appeared to be powered by crushed poppy seeds. We assumed it was some kind of child’s doodle, but for amusement my lab assistants followed the designs and built a version of it and it worked.

“We drove over one kilometre on one batch of seeds.”

It is not known how advanced the Iranian poppy seed car programme is, but Israeli companies are already examining the details of the plans to see how they can begin manufacture.