The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency has voted to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for non-compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the first such move in 20 years.
The resolution, tabled by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States, passed at a board meeting in Vienna on Wednesday. At least 23 countries voted in favor. Eight countries abstained. China, Russia, and Niger voted against.
The document asks IAEA chief Rafael Grossi to report Iran to the Security Council. The board has 35 member countries. It cites, with grave concern, Iran’s continued non-compliance with its obligations and reiterates a call upon Tehran to urgently remedy that non-compliance.
The referral marks an escalation in the diplomatic standoff between Iran and Western nations, though it is largely symbolic. The UN Security Council is unlikely to take any action because Iran’s allies Russia and China are veto-holding members.
Inspectors locked out since June 2025
The IAEA has not had access to Iran’s nuclear facilities since Israel and the United States carried out strikes on those sites during a 12-day conflict in June 2025. The sites were targeted again in the latest war, launched by Israel and the US on 28 February. IAEA staff have not been allowed to continue inspecting Iran’s three nuclear facilities, which were reportedly badly damaged or destroyed in the strikes.
Iran says the attacks on its facilities, including uranium enrichment plants in Natanz and Fordo, are the reason it does not let IAEA inspectors visit those sites. Tehran also wants such access to be part of a wider settlement with the US and Israel to end the war. The European Union accused Iran of suspending its cooperation with the agency and refusing to allow inspections. The bloc said it is critical and urgent that Iran provide the IAEA with updated verifiable declarations about the quantity and whereabouts of nuclear material and related activities and allow inspections to resume in all its nuclear facilities.
Grossi told his board on Monday that the issue needed to be urgently addressed. He said the agency’s lack of information about the facilities and associated nuclear material, and its inability to conduct verification activities there, is a matter of serious proliferation concern.
Tehran blames US and Israeli strikes
Iran condemned the IAEA decision. Iranian deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi wrote on X that those behind the strikes attack Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities, disrupt the normal process of verification, and then use that very disruption as a pretext to issue a resolution. Iran’s mission to the UN denounced the resolution in a separate post on X, saying the current situation is created solely because of the criminal acts of aggression by the US and Israeli regime. The mission said the delusional objective of the US to force the great Iranian nation into surrender and to plunder its oil will never happen.
Iran had repeatedly warned the IAEA against passing such a resolution and said on Monday that it would retaliate if it passed. Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is forbidden from producing nuclear weapons and has repeatedly said it is not manufacturing them. The US, Israel, and a number of European countries have questioned this claim amid concerns that Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
The United States and European allies, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, had lobbied the board’s members in recent days to pass the resolution.
At the start of the latest US-Israel war against Iran, Tehran had roughly 440kg of 60% enriched uranium, according to senior US officials. The IAEA suspects Iran has about 400kg of highly enriched uranium, with which 10 nuclear weapons could potentially be manufactured if enriched further. The material can be fairly quickly enriched to the 90% threshold needed for weapons-grade uranium.