Iran’s president orders suspension of co-operation with UN nuclear watchdog

Iran’s president has ordered the country to suspend its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after US and Israeli air strikes hit its most-important nuclear facilities.

The order by Masoud Pezeshkian included no timetable or details but is likely to further limit inspectors’ ability to track Tehran’s programme which had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi signalled in a CBS News interview that Tehran still would be willing to continue negotiations with the United States.

“I don’t think negotiations will restart as quickly as that,” Mr Araghchi said, referring to US President Donald Trump’s comments that talks could start as early as this week. However, he added: “The doors of diplomacy will never slam shut.”

Iran has limited the UN watchdog’s inspections in the past as a pressure tactic in negotiating with the West, although Tehran has denied there are any immediate plans to resume talks with the US which had been upended by the 12-day Iran-Israel war.

Iranian state television announced Mr Pezeshkian’s order, which followed a law passed by Iran’s parliament to suspend co-operation. The bill had already received the approval of Iran’s constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, on Thursday, and is likely to have the support of the country’s Supreme National Security Council, which Mr Pezeshkian chairs.

“The government is mandated to immediately suspend all co-operation 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.”

The Vienna-based IAEA has monitored Iran’s nuclear programme for years.

It is not known how Tehran will implement the suspension. Under Iran’s theocractic government, there is room for the council to implement the bill as it sees fit, which means everything legislators asked for might not be done.

However, the move stops short of what experts feared the most. They had been concerned that Tehran, in response to the war, could fully end its co-operation with the IAEA, abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and rush towards creating a bomb.

Under the treaty, countries agree not to build or obtain nuclear weapons and allow the IAEA to conduct inspections to verify authorities have correctly declared their programmes.

Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, negotiated under then US president Barack Obama, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to 3.67% — enough to fuel a nuclear power plant, but far below the threshold of 90% 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 as the main assessor of Iran’s commitment to the deal.

But Mr Trump, in his first term as president in 2018, unilaterally withdrew Washington from the accord, insisting it was not tough enough and did not address Iran’s missile programme or its support for militant groups in the wider Middle East.

That set in motion years of tensions, including attacks at sea and on land.

Iran had been enriching up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. It also has enough of a stockpile to build multiple nuclear bombs.

Iran has long insisted its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, but the IAEA, western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an organised weapons programme until 2003.

Israeli air strikes, which began on 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 reach of a nuclear weapon.

Iran has said the Israeli attacks killed 935 “Iranian citizens”, including 38 children and 102 women. However, Tehran has a long 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, put the death toll at 1,190 people, including 436 civilians and 435 security force members. The attacks wounded another 4,475 people, the group said.

Meanwhile, it appears that Iranian officials are assessing the damage done by the American strikes on the three nuclear sites on June 22, including those at Fordo, a site built under a mountain about 60 miles south west of Tehran.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analysed by the Associated Press show Iranian officials at Fordo on Monday apparently examining the damage caused by American bunker-buster bombs.