UN nuclear watchdog board censures Iran, which retaliates by announcing a new enrichment site

VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s board of governors on Thursday formally found that Iran isn’t complying with its nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years, a move that could lead to further tensions and set in motion an effort to restore United Nations sanctions on Tehran later this year.

Iran reacted immediately, saying it will establish a new enrichment facility “in a secure location” and that “other measures are also being planned.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this political resolution,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a joint statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump previously warned that Israel or America could carry out airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations failed — and some American personnel and their families have begun leaving the region over the tensions. The escalation over Iran’s nuclear program comes ahead of a new round of Iran-U.S. talks Sunday in Oman.

Nineteen countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board, which represents the agency’s member nations, voted for the resolution, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of the closed-doors vote.

Russia, China and Burkina Faso opposed it, 11 abstained and two did not vote.

In the draft resolution seen by The Associated Press, the board of governors renews a call on Iran to provide answers “without delay” in a long-running investigation into uranium traces found at several locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites.

Western officials suspect that the uranium traces could provide further evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program until 2003.

The resolution was put forward by France, the U.K., Germany and the United States.

Iran under pressure as Trump warns of possible airstrikes

Speaking to Iranian state television after the vote, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said that his agency immediately informed the IAEA of “specific and effective” actions Tehran would take.

“One is the launch of a third secure site” for enrichment, spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. He did not elaborate on the location. Iran has two underground sites at Fordo and Natanz and has been building tunnels in the mountains near Natanz since suspected Israeli sabotage attacks targeted that facility.

The other step would be replacing old centrifuges for advanced ones at Fordo. “The implication of this is that our production of enriched materials will significantly increase,” Kamalvandi said.

According to the draft resolution, “Iran’s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran … constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement.”

Under those obligations, which are part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is legally bound to declare all nuclear material and activities and allow IAEA inspectors to verify that none of it is being diverted from peaceful uses.

The draft resolution also finds that the IAEA’s “inability … to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful gives rise to questions that are within the competence of the United Nations Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The draft resolution made a direct reference to the U.S.-Iran talks, stressing its “support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear program, including the talks between the United States and Iran, leading to an agreement that addresses all international concerns related to Iran’s nuclear activities, encouraging all parties to constructively engage in diplomacy.”

Still a chance for Iran to cooperate with IAEA

A senior Western diplomat last week described the resolution as a “serious step,” but added that Western nations are “not closing the door to diplomacy on this issue.” However, if Iran fails to cooperate, an extraordinary IAEA board meeting will likely be held in the summer, during which another resolution could get passed that will refer the issue to the Security Council, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

The three European nations have repeatedly threatened in the past to reinstate, or “snapback,” sanctions that have been lifted under the original 2015 Iran nuclear deal if Iran does not provide “technically credible” answers to the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s questions.

The authority to reestablish those sanctions by the complaint of any member of the original 2015 nuclear deal expires in October, putting the West on a clock to exert pressure on Tehran over its program before losing that power.

The resolution comes on heels of the IAEA’s so-called “comprehensive report” that was circulated among member states last weekend. In the report, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said that Iran’s cooperation with the agency has “been less than satisfactory” when it comes to uranium traces discovered by agency inspectors at several locations in Iran.

One of the sites became known publicly in 2018, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed it at the United Nations and called it a clandestine nuclear warehouse hidden at a rug-cleaning plant. Iran denied this, but in 2019, IAEA inspectors detected the presence of uranium traces there as well as at two other sites.

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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.