The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors has declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years, raising the prospect of reporting it to the U.N. Security Council.
The major step marks the end of several simmering standoffs between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran that have occurred since President Donald Trump pulled the US out of a nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers in 2018 during his first term, causing the deal to unravel.
Iran is likely to respond with a nuclear escalation, as it has previously stated. This might hamper current talks between Iran and the United States aimed at placing fresh sanctions on Iran’s increasing nuclear activities.
The resolution also comes at a time of particularly heightened tension, with the U.S. pulling staff out of the Middle East, and Trump warning the region could become dangerous and saying Washington would not let Iran have nuclear weapons.
Diplomats at the closed-door meeting said the board passed the resolution submitted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany with 19 countries in favour, 11 abstentions and three states – Russia, China and Burkina Faso – against.
According to a statement, The IAEA said “The Board of Governors finds that Iran’s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency” .
A central issue is Iran’s failure to provide the IAEA with credible explanations of how uranium traces detected at undeclared sites in Iran came to be there despite the agency having investigated the issue for years.
U.S. intelligence services and the IAEA have long believed Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons programme it halted in 2003, though isolated experiments continued for several years. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said this week the findings were broadly consistent with that.
Iran denies ever having pursued nuclear weapons.
