Iran’s president on Wednesday ordered the country to suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after American and Israeli airstrikes hit its most-important nuclear facilities, likely further limiting inspectors’ ability to trace Tehran’s program that had been enriching uranium to close weapons-grade levels.
The order by President Masoud Pezeshkian, nevertheless, included no timetables or details about what that suspension would entail. Nonetheless, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi signaled in a CBS News interview that Tehran still could be willing to proceed negotiations with america.
“I don’t think negotiations will restart as quickly as that,” Araghchi said, referring to Trump’s comments that talks could start as early as this week. Nonetheless, he added: “The doors of diplomacy won’t ever slam shut.”
Iran has limited IAEA inspections up to now as a pressure tactic in negotiating with the West — though as of immediately Tehran has denied that there’s any immediate plans to resume talks with america that had been upended by the 12-day Iran-Israel war.
Iranian state television announced Pezeshkian’s order, which followed a law passed by Iran’s parliament to suspend that cooperation. The bill already received the approval of Iran’s constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, on Thursday, and certain the support of the country’s Supreme National Security Council, which Pezeshkian chairs.
“The federal government is remitted to right away suspend all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and its related Safeguards Agreement,” state television quoted the bill as saying. “This suspension will remain in effect until certain conditions are met, including the guaranteed security of nuclear facilities and scientists.”
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It wasn’t immediately clear what that will mean for the Vienna-based IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. The agency long has monitored Iran’s nuclear program and said that it was waiting for an official communication from Iran on what the suspension meant.
Iran’s decision drew a right away condemnation from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.
“Iran has just issued a scandalous announcement about suspending its cooperation with the IAEA,” he said in an X post. “This can be a complete renunciation of all its international nuclear obligations and commitments.”
Saar urged European nations that were a part of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal to implement its so-called snapback clause. That will reimpose all U.N. sanctions on it originally lifted by Tehran’s nuclear cope with world powers, if considered one of its Western parties declares the Islamic Republic is out of compliance with it.
Israel is widely believed to be the one nuclear-armed state within the Middle East, and the IAEA doesn’t have access to its weapons-related facilities.
It’s not known how Iran will implement this suspension. Iran’s theocratic government, there may be room for the council to implement the bill as they see fit. That implies that all the things lawmakers asked for may not be done.
Nonetheless, Iran’s move stops wanting what experts feared probably the most. That they had been concerned that Tehran, in response to the war, could resolve to completely end its cooperation with the IAEA, abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and rush toward a bomb. That treaty has countries agree not to construct or obtain nuclear weapons and allows the IAEA to conduct inspections to confirm that countries accurately declared their programs.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal allowed Iran to complement uranium to three.67 per cent — enough to fuel a nuclear power plant, but far below the edge of 90 per cent needed for weapons-grade uranium. It also drastically reduced Iran’s stockpile of uranium, limited its use of centrifuges and relied on the IAEA to oversee Tehran’s compliance through additional oversight. The IAEA served because the predominant assessor of Iran’s commitment to the deal.
But U.S. President Donald Trump, in his first term in 2018, unilaterally withdrew Washington from the accord, insisting it wasn’t tough enough and didn’t address Iran’s missile program or its support for militant groups in the broader Middle East. That set in motion years of tensions, including attacks at sea and on land.
Iran had been enriching as much as 60 per cent, a brief, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. It also has enough of a stockpile to construct multiple nuclear bombs, should it decide to achieve this. Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, however the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an organized weapons program up until 2003.
Suspension comes after Israel, U.S. airstrikes
Israeli airstrikes, which began June 13, decimated the upper ranks of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard and targeted its arsenal of ballistic missiles. The strikes also hit Iran’s nuclear sites, which Israel claimed put Tehran within sight of a nuclear weapon.
Iran has said the Israeli attacks killed 935 “Iranian residents,” including 38 children and 102 women. Nonetheless, Iran has an extended history of offering lower death counts around unrest over political considerations.
The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, has put the death toll at 1,190 people killed, including 436 civilians and 435 security force members. The attacks wounded one other 4,475 people, the group said.
Meanwhile, it seems that Iranian officials now are assessing the damage done by the American strikes conducted on the three nuclear sites on June 22, including those at Fordo, a site built under a mountain about 100 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Tehran.
Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press show Iranian officials at Fordo on Monday likely examining the damage attributable to American bunker busters. Trucks might be seen in the photographs, in addition to not less than one crane and an excavator at tunnels on the location. That corresponded to pictures shot Sunday by Maxar Technologies similarly showing the continued work.
—Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
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