Tehran has suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian announced Wednesday, according to state media reports.
The move marks a significant stepback in Iran’s international cooperation after Washington’s dramatic June 21 strikes on its nuclear enrichment facilities.
Iranian lawmakers passed a bill to freeze cooperation on July 25. The extent of the bill — and what exactly it contains — remains unclear, but state media said IAEA inspectors will need permission from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to visit Iran’s nuclear facilities which will be dependent on “the security of the country’s nuclear facilities and that of peaceful nuclear activities” being guaranteed.
The IAEA said in a statement it was aware of reports of Iran’s suspended cooperation, and is awaiting official confirmation.
Iran has already banned IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi from its nuclear facilities and removed surveillance cameras from the sites last week, prompting condemnation from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the American strikes “totally obliterated” the facilities, but Grossi estimated the damage that was not “total.”
Grossi recently told CBS News that Iran could begin producing enriched uranium again in “a matter of months.” Iranian officials heavily criticized Grossi for failing to condemn the strikes, and Pezeshkian told French President Emmanuel Macron in a call that “the trust in the U.N. nuclear inspectorate is broken inside Iran.”
Iran previously allowed the IAEA to access and inspect its nuclear plants and use sophisticated surveillance devices as a part of the nuclear deal Tehran signed with France, Russia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany and the European Union in 2015 to keep its nuclear program under control.
The first Trump administration withdrew from that deal in 2018.
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