DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s president on Wednesday reportedly ordered the country to suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after American airstrikes hit its most-important nuclear facilities.
State media online reported the decision by President Masoud Pezeshkian.
It follows a law passed by Iran’s parliament to suspend that cooperation. It also already received the OK of a constitutional watchdog as well.
It wasn’t immediately clear what that would mean for the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.
Iran’s President Masoud PezeshkianAhmed Jalil / Pool via AFP – Getty Images
The Vienna-based IAEA long has monitored Iran’s nuclear program. The agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
After the law’s passage, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council was to oversee the bill and implementation. While the council itself hasn’t said anything publicly, Pezeshkian is the head of the council, so his reported order signals that the bill would be implemented.
However, under Iran’s theocractic 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.
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, negotiated under then U.S. President Barack Obama, 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.
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.
