Thank you, Chair.
On behalf of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we express our sincere gratitude to Director General Grossi and to his team for their tireless efforts to fulfill the IAEA’s verification and monitoring mandate in Iran.
Colleagues,
One year ago, this body determined that Iran’s failure to credibly address critical safeguards concerns that had been outstanding for more than six years constituted noncompliance with its NPT-required Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. We will not take time today to again recite the list of issues that gave rise to this finding or to reiterate Iran’s many missed opportunities to address these issues. The matters have been discussed at length and were well-articulated in the May 2025 Comprehensive Assessment produced by the Director General at the Board’s request. We will simply underscore that the concerns in question relate to Iran’s core legal obligations under its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and led the Director General to conclude at that time that he could not rule out that nuclear material remained unaccounted for and outside of safeguards in Iran and he could not provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program was exclusively peaceful.
The finding of non-compliance last year was not an action the Board took lightly. We deliberated for years before finally taking this necessary step. It was necessary to defend the IAEA’s authority, necessary to protect the credibility of the global safeguards regime, necessary to fulfill the Board’s statutory mandate, and necessary to send the message to Iran – and to any state posing proliferation concerns – that safeguards obligations are not optional. At that time, we deferred reporting the non-compliance to the UN Security Council in New York to give Iran additional time to choose a different path before such reporting.
Regrettably, Iran chose the path of continued defiance of its obligations. Since the adoption of last year’s resolution, Iran has not only not engaged the IAEA at all on the outstanding matters, but it has also doubled down on its non-cooperation, further deepening its non-compliance with its CSA.
In his latest reports, the Director General makes clear that Iran’s cooperation over the past year falls far short of what is legally required, even considering the extenuating circumstances it faces. We underscore the Director General’s view that it is “indispensable and urgent to implement effectively the NPT Safeguards Agreement, which remains in force, and that its implementation cannot be suspended by Iran under any circumstances.”
While we welcome Iran’s facilitation of in-field inspection activities at the Bushehr facility earlier this month, we must also note that Iran has repeatedly delayed IAEA visits to other declared facilities, and for nearly a year now has refused to provide required information about or access to its four uranium enrichment facilities or the enriched uranium stockpiles associated with those facilities. As a result, the Director General reports that he cannot verify the status, for safeguards purposes, of these facilities and associated nuclear material. The Agency’s lack of access to this material for nearly a year – which is long overdue according to standard safeguards practice – is a matter of proliferation concern and of compliance with the NPT Safeguards Agreement. We are deeply concerned by this situation and we echo the Director General’s view that this matter should be addressed with “utmost urgency.”
In addition to the IAEA’s statutory mandate to implement Iran’s CSA, the Board has directed the IAEA to also verify Iran’s implementation of its obligations under relevant provisions of UN Security Council resolutions. We note with concern that the Director General has reported now for the second time that due to a lack of cooperation from Iran, he is unable to conduct these verification activities. This is unacceptable. Like the CSA, these UNSCR obligations are legally binding and must be implemented.
Chair, Colleagues,
In light of the foregoing facts, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have decided to table a resolution for the Board’s consideration today. Iran’s actions have left little choice. We underscore that we continue to seek a diplomatic solution to the longstanding concerns posed by Iran’s nuclear program and we remain hopeful that such a solution will be found. But any such solution will necessarily rest on the foundation of verification and monitoring that the Board has the responsibility to uphold, and no deal will be sustainable if Iran’s safeguards non-compliance is not also addressed.
The resolution we have tabled is intended to express the Board’s deepening concern with Iran’s ongoing refusal to cooperate with the IAEA to resolve the outstanding safeguards concerns, with its more recent actions that deepen its CSA non-compliance, and with its failure to provide the IAEA with the necessary access to verify its obligations under relevant UN Security Council resolutions. We hope we can find broad agreement in the necessity of supporting the Director General’s efforts to carry out the Agency’s verification and monitoring authorities and defending the safeguards regime in the face of blatant violations. That is what this resolution does, and we hope you will support it. In this vein, we welcome the following co-sponsors of this resolution Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Lithuania, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Romania, and we welcome other members who wish to indicate their co-sponsorship during subsequent interventions.
Even more than that, though, we hope that Iran will listen to the views expressed here today, reconsider its approach to these matters, and engage anew in the diplomatic negotiations underway while cooperating fully with the IAEA to provide all required information and access. Iran has another opportunity to change course before the Board acts to provide the statutorily required report to the UN Security Council – but the substance of that required report is in Iran’s hands.