The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency on Wednesday censured Iran for its refusal to grant inspectors access to its uranium enrichment program, passing a carefully worded resolution after the United States softened its tone in an attempt to avoid provoke a crisis at a time when the Middle East is already in turmoil.
The resolution was sponsored by France, Britain and Germany in response to developments in Iran’s nuclear program over the past year and the Iranian government’s refusal to cooperate with the agency. By most estimates, Tehran is now just days or weeks away from being able to produce bomb-grade fuel for about three nuclear weapons, although actually converting them into warheads could take a year or more.
The resolution was approved in a vote by the 35-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body, with 20 votes in favor, 12 abstentions and two against. The negative votes were cast by Russia and China. Russia has close security ties with Iran and buys Iranian drones for the war in Ukraine. China is a close economic ally that helps Iran evade sanctions by buying its oil at a discounted price.
Nine years ago, when Iran agreed to strict limits on its nuclear program in a deal reached with the Obama administration and European nations, both Russia and China joined the effort to contain Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Wednesday’s vote in Vienna made clear how dramatically his position has changed.
While IAEA censure resolutions are not legally binding, they do carry political weight. In November 2022, the junta approved a similar resolution drafted by the same three European countries, demanding that Iran cooperate with investigations into traces of uranium found at suspected former nuclear sites. Iran never complied.
However, the Biden administration was clearly concerned about avoiding a resolution that was so strongly worded that it could provoke a violent reaction in Tehran. U.S. officials said they shared European concerns but did not want to support an unenforceable resolution that could lead Iran to step up its nuclear program at a time when it seeks to defuse tensions in the region.
In the end, after some wording, the United States voted in favor of the resolution.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and that it is not pursuing a bomb. But in recent months, several senior officials have said publicly that Iran could review its nuclear doctrine if it faced an existential threat from other nuclear countries, namely Israel and the United States.
Ali Vaez, Iranian director of the International Crisis Group, said that, as a matter of principle, the resolution adopted on Wednesday was deserved, given long-standing concerns about Iran’s lack of cooperation with the UN agency, but that it could prove counterproductive. “Precedents suggest that Tehran is more likely to redouble its efforts for the very actions that are being condemned,” Vaez said.
Even before the votes were cast, Iran was already showing signs of its displeasure. On Tuesday, the president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami, called the resolution “anti-Iran” and politically motivated and promised immediate retaliation, according to Iranian media.
It was not immediately clear what steps Iran might take, but its options include further raising the level of its enriched uranium, which now stands at 60 percent, just shy of the 90 percent generally considered weapons-grade fuel. That’s much higher than the enrichment levels, typically around 3 percent, needed to produce fuel for nuclear power.
On Wednesday, Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, who also served as chief nuclear negotiator, said his government could “activate” its nuclear capabilities based on its national interests, according to a video of his comments on Iranian media.
The vote came just two weeks after the deaths of Iran’s president and foreign minister in a helicopter crash.
Iran and seven allies (Russia, China, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Syria) issued a joint statement condemning the IAEA’s censorship. They called the resolution ill-conceived and said it violated diplomatic norms, given that Iran is still mourning the death of its president and foreign minister. The statement said the resolution would have “the opposite effect.”
The three-page resolution lays out a long list of concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, particularly unanswered questions about why traces of uranium were found in two locations that Iran had not declared as part of its nuclear program. It calls on Iran to allow inspectors to take samples and calls for the government to lift a ban on the agency’s top investors examining sites they need to see inside Iran.
When the Biden administration first took office, it attempted to negotiate what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called a “longer, stronger” version of the nuclear deal reached in 2015. The deal collapsed after the president Donald J. Trump unilaterally exited it in 2018 and imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran. Experts, including Trump’s own advisers, had told him the deal was largely working.
A new agreement was never reached.