Iran’s parliament has unanimously agreed to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear inspectorate, making it harder for an independent expert assessment to be made about thedegree of damage inflictedon Iran’s three key nuclear sites by the joint US and Israeli bombing.
It also makes it harder for the location of any highly enriched uranium to be known. The vote is a sign that Iran wants to harden its negotiating position on cooperation with the west in the wake of 12 days of attacks mounted byIsraeland the US, but supported by European governments only with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The decision to suspend cooperation with the IAEA is likely to be passed for final approval to the Guardian Council, a body empowered to vet legislation.
The defiance is just one part of an internal debate insideIranabout the lessons to be learned from the past fortnight. Some analysts fear that the government’s relief at its survival, and absence of any grassroots revolt, will turn into a triumphalism that blinds its leaders to the country’s strategic weakness and the need to make concessions.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, accepted that Iran’s nuclear facilities had beenseverely damaged, the first Iranian politician to make such an admission.
No date has yet been set for a resumption of diplomatic talks between the US special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, but Witkoff said contacts were being made and Donald Trump claimed there would be a meeting next week.
The sixth round of their talks, due to have taken place on 15 June, were called off by Iran two days in advance when it came under what it regarded as a US-sponsored attack by Israel.
A provisional internal US government assessment says the Iranian nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months, but Trump insisted it had been obliterated.
The parliament’s move to suspend cooperation with the IAEA was passed with no opposing votes. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament, said the IAEA had “not fulfilled its duties and become a political tool”. Resumption of cooperation would be dependent on a report from the Iranian Atomic Energy Authority and the national security and foreign policy committee. Guarantees would be needed about the safety of Iranian nuclear facilities.
The national security committee recommended suspension of cooperation on Tuesday after it described the IAEA’s recent report criticising Iran’s lack of cooperation with the agency as false and the pretext for an attack on Iran. MPs shouted “down with the US and down with Israel” after passing the motion.
Qalibaf said Iran’s civil nuclear programme would continue “at a rapid pace”, contradicting a claim by Trump that Iran “would not want to go near” another nuclear programme or domestic enrichment of uranium.
The motion said activities such as “installing surveillance cameras, inspections and reporting to the agency will be halted unless the future security of Iran’s nuclear facilities is guaranteed”.
The IAEA had criticised Iran in its latest report for lack of cooperation with the inspectorate, leading to a censure motion last month being passed by a majority of member states on the IAEA board. The censure motion sets in train a chain of events likely to lead to the restoration of UN sanctions this October.
The parliament also heard calls for Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, to be sued for providing false reports and for his staff spying on nuclear facilities on behalf of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
Grossi said the international community could not accept Iran ending cooperation over its nuclear facilities. He admitted the IAEA could not know the location of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
The Kremlin attacked the lost credibility of the IAEA and said the Iranian decision was a cause for concern. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said the chances of reviving talks on a new nuclear deal had receded.
Iran’s vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, said: “We will no longer allow bargaining over enrichment within our country’s territory because we have entered a new space and the enemy has also realised that it is not facing the same Iran as before.”
Debate is already swirling over whether the government should take the next step and leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a move that would signal Iran is intending to be free of the treaty’s constraints and like Israel will build a nuclear deterrent.
Akbar A’lami, a former MP from Tabriz, said: “If our membership in the NPT cannot defend us against military attack or economic sanctions, and in practice becomes a tool of inspection and constant threat, what is the justification for remaining in it?”
Iran has always insisted a nuclear bomb is unIslamic. It may be that Iran will try to remain in a state of ambiguity about its nuclear intentions in an attempt to ward off further attacks from Israel.
The overall narrative in government circles is that Iran defiantly held out against the attacks of the US and Israel, prompting a new unity across Iranian society that the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has long wanted to nurture.
But critics say this new consensus is born of anger with Israel, and not faith in the government. A crackdown on dissidents is under way, often under the guise of tracking down a network of Mossad agents.
Centrist politicians are urging caution about claims of a historic victory. The former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani wrote: “We must be prepared not for warmongering but for a lasting and powerful peace, which comes at a cost and is achieved through rationality, deterrence and the pursuit of strategic depth in the hearts and minds of Iranians, not through baseless and reckless wishful thinking.”
Experts are already discussing how Iran’s air defences were so exposed and Russia’s role in failing to supply Sukhoi-35 jets as contracted in 2023.
Others claim arrivals of refugees, especially those from Afghanistan and the Kurdistan region of Iraq, have led to a weakening of the country’s security, which must be reviewed in the postwar reconstruction period.