Iran’s president orders country to suspend cooperation with UN nuclear
watchdog IAEA
[July 02, 2025]
By JON GAMBRELL
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — 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 track Tehran's program that had been enriching uranium to
near weapons-grade levels.
The order by President Masoud Pezeshkian, however, included no
timetables or details about what that suspension would entail. However,
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi signaled 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,” Araghchi
said, referring to Trump's comments that talks could start as early as
this week. However, he added: “The doors of diplomacy will never slam
shut.”
Pressure tactic
Iran has limited IAEA inspections in the past as a pressure tactic in
negotiating with the West — though as of right now Tehran has denied
that there's any immediate plans to resume talks with the United States
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 likely the support of the country's
Supreme National Security Council, which Pezeshkian chairs.
“The government is mandated to immediately 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.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what that would 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.
Israel condemns the move
Iran's decision drew an immediate 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 is a complete
renunciation of all its international nuclear obligations and
commitments.”
Saar urged European nations that were part of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal
to implement its so-called snapback clause. That would reimpose all U.N.
sanctions on it originally lifted by Tehran’s nuclear deal with world
powers, if one of its Western parties declares the Islamic Republic is
out of compliance with it.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the
Middle East, and the IAEA doesn't have access to its weapons-related
facilities.
Details remain unclear
It's not known how Iran will implement this suspension. Iran's
theocratic government, there is room for the council to implement the
bill as they see fit. That means that everything lawmakers asked for
might not be done.
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However, Iran's move stops short of what experts feared the most.
They had been concerned that Tehran, in response to the war, could
decide to fully end its cooperation with the IAEA, abandon the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and rush toward a bomb. That treaty
has countries agree not to build or obtain nuclear weapons and
allows the IAEA to conduct inspections to verify that countries
correctly declared their programs.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal 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 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 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, should it choose to do so. Iran has long
insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the IAEA,
Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an organized
weapons program up until 2003.
Suspension comes after Israel, US 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 reach of a nuclear weapon.
Iran has said the Israeli attacks killed 935 “Iranian citizens,”
including 38 children and 102 women. However, Iran 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, has put the death toll at 1,190 people killed, including 436
civilians and 435 security force members. The attacks wounded
another 4,475 people, the group said.
Meanwhile, it appears 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 kilometers (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 caused by American bunker busters. Trucks could be seen in
the images, as well as at least one crane and an excavator at
tunnels on the site. That corresponded to images shot Sunday by
Maxar Technologies similarly showing the ongoing work.
___
Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel,
contributed to this report.
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