Iran on Thursday said it was ending the agreement it signed in September allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to resume inspections there, after a resolution passed earlier in the day by the agency’s board demanding “precise information” about Tehran’s enriched uranium and nuclear sites “without delay.”
A statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that countries that voted for the resolution — backed by France, Britain, Germany and the United States — demonstrated “disregard” for “Iran’s goodwill and engagement” and disrupted cooperation between the IAEA and Iran.
The exchange was the latest fallout after an Israeli bombing campaign in June, capped by a U.S. air attack on Iran’s main nuclear enrichment and storage sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. President Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
After the bombing, Iran suspended regular IAEA inspections that are required under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it agreed during a September meeting in Cairo to resume them.
Since then, the U.N. watchdog agency has tried to assess the damage and determine what happened to a stockpile of what it estimated was more than 900 pounds of highly enriched, near-weapons-grade uranium.
But while inspectors have been allowed to visit some sites untouched by the attacks, the agency said last week that it had not been permitted to visit what last week’s IAEA report to the board called “the affected facilities.”
“Under its NPT Safeguards agreement, Iran is required to provide a special report without delay on the status … of the nuclear material and facilities affected by the military attacks: it has yet to do so,” the report said. “Iran is also required to provide nuclear material accounting reports.”
“The agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the previously declared inventories of nuclear material in Iran at the affected facilities,” the IAEA said, noting there has been no verification since mid-June. The report said such inspection was critical in order to “allay its concerns and ensure compliance with the NPT … regarding the possible diversion of declared nuclear material from peaceful use.”
Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. But inspectors and concerned countries have said there is no peaceful use for such highly enriched uranium. The quantity Iran has enriched to 60 percent — just short of the approximately 90 percent that is needed to produce a weapon — is enough to fuel 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a recent interview with the Associated Press.
Adding to the tensions are concerns that war between Israel and Iran could break out again. Unsuccessful talks between Tehran and the Trump administration — which offered a suspension of economic sanctions in exchange for elimination of all Iranian enrichment and removal of all highly enriched stockpiles — took place in the spring.
Trump gave Tehran a 60-day deadline; the June bombing started on day 61. “A deal could have been worked out,” Trump told reporters Tuesday during a White House visit by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Iran does want to make a deal,” he said. “I think they very badly want to make a deal. I am totally open to it, and we’re talking to them.”
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