Tel Aviv  - Iran has "crossed the technological threshold" for making an atom bomb, Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said Wednesday.

Achieving military nuclear capability was now "mainly dependent on a political decision by Iran" to actually do so, Israeli media quoted Yadlin as telling an Israeli parliamentary committee dealing with security.

Yadlin added that, at this point, it was not in Tehran's interest to do so, because it did not want to be accused of breaking its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory.

"The right combination of talks and sanctions, the carrot and the stick," he said, could therefore still be effective in stopping Iran from producing a nuclear weapon.

The "battle to prevent a nuclear Iran is not yet lost," Yadlin said.

He said Tehran's strategy was to work slowly and advance towards the capability to produce nuclear weapons in stages, but to stop short of actually making one, so as not to be accused of breaking its obligations or bring upon itself more punitive measures.

This way it was at the same time maintaining the capability to build a bomb quickly once the decision to do so has been made, he said in the briefing to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

The main difficulty still faced by Iran was transferring the material to long-range missiles, which has already been developed, Yadlin said. (dpa)