Iran pushes for IAEA resolution as top council backs nuclear inspections

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says there will be no inspections if biting UN sanctions are reinstated by the West.

By Maziar Motamedi

Tehran, Iran – Iran is trying to pass a resolution prohibiting attacks on nuclear installations at the United Nations global nuclear watchdog as its Supreme National Security Council backed nuclear inspections after strikes by the United States and Israel during a 12-day conflict in June.

Iran’s top nuclear officials are now in Vienna to participate in the 69th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which starts later on Monday and ends on Friday.

They have said they will table a resolution that bans attacks on any nuclear facilities, but have not publicly revealed the language or full text of the document.

After arriving in the Austrian capital, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), told Iranian state media that the conference is a good opportunity to direct attention to IAEA moves, particularly its director, Rafael Grossi, that have raised questions about the agency’s credibility.

“We witnessed the agency’s lack of professional conduct, as this body, without taking any position, did not condemn [attacks on Iran] and instead acted in a very neutral manner – it applied a double standard to perfection,” Eslami said, pointing out that Grossi has repeatedly and explicitly condemned attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

“Even if this resolution is not adopted, it shows that the Charter of the United Nations has, in the truest sense of the word, been damaged.”

Iranian officials plan to hold negotiations with some of the 180 member states of the conference, but they have admitted it is possible the resolution will not even be put to a vote.

According to Iran’s deputy nuclear chief Behrouz Kamalvandi, who is also in Vienna, the US is putting pressure on member states to block the resolution and has “even threatened the agency that they will cut off assistance to the organisation”.

But Kamalvandi said there is precedent for resolutions, issued by the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the IAEA, similar to what Tehran is proposing.

He named UNSC Resolution 487, which was adopted in 1981 to explicitly condemn Israel’s air strikes on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor as a violation of the UN Charter, called on Israel to refrain from such acts, and recognised the right of all states to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under IAEA safeguards.

Kamalvandi also pointed to two IAEA General Conference resolutions, one passed in 1985 and another adopted in 1990, which emphasised the principle of protecting safeguarded nuclear facilities and urged member states to support universal respect for the prohibition of attacks.

Since the US reneged on Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers under President Donald Trump in 2018 and unilaterally imposed sanctions, the Board of Governors of the IAEA has adopted four Western-backed censure resolutions against Iran, which maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian purposes.

Neither US intelligence nor the IAEA found that Iran was pursuing an atomic weapon earlier this year.

Israel started attacking Iran on June 13, a day after the agency found Iran noncompliant with its commitments to international nuclear safeguards, prompting Tehran to accuse the watchdog of paving the way for the 12-day war that killed more than 1,000 people and inflicted damage estimated at billions of dollars across Iran.