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Iran Suspends Cooperation with IAEA, Accusing Nuclear Watchdog of 'Complicity' in Trump Strikes
"The IAEA, which did not even formally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, has put its international credibility up for sale," said Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
Jun 25, 2025
The Iranian parliament approved a bill Wednesday suspending its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The resolution states that weapons inspectors with the United Nations nuclear watchdog organization will not be allowed to enter the country unless it guarantees the security of Iran's nuclear facilities and their ability to pursue peaceful nuclear activities.
Ahead of the vote, lawmakers denounced the IAEA, accusing it of enabling U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities Saturday—strikes Iran, as well as other observers of international law, have denounced as a clear violation of its sovereignty.
"The IAEA, which did not even formally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, has put its international credibility up for sale," said Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. "For this reason, the [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran] will suspend its cooperation with the Agency until the security of its nuclear facilities is guaranteed, and Iran's peaceful nuclear program will proceed at an even faster pace."
In response to the resolution, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that "the return of inspectors to Iran's nuclear facilities is a top priority."
Independent inspectors have not yet been able to inspect the damage to the three nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan—hit by the U.S.
Following the strikes, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Iran's nuclear sites were "completely and fully obliterated."
However, reporting by CNN and The New York Times on Tuesday, based on unnamed sources familiar with an internal assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, undercut that claim, stating that the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a matter of months.
Grossi said Monday that the airstrikes likely inflicted "very significant damage" at Fordo, but that no conclusions could be reached until independent inspectors are allowed to examine the site and account for Iran's uranium stockpile.
The latest IAEA report issued on May 31 found "no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear program" being pursued by Iran—a finding echoed by U.S. intelligence agencies.
However, the IAEA did find that Iran had significantly increased its uranium stockpile enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade, which it said was a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Despite no "imminent threat," according to the most recent intelligence assessments, the Trump administration cited those IAEA findings to justify its attacks.
As a result, Iran's nuclear organization has questioned the IAEA's credibility as a neutral broker, accusing them of "deliberate inaction," following American and Israeli strikes. It said in a statement Sunday that these strikes were carried out "with the IAEA's silence, if not complicity."
Some critics have argued that the IAEA's decision to declare Iran in violation of the NPT was the result of significant U.S. arm-twisting and that the IAEA has not applied similar scrutiny to Israel's nuclear weapons program.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that strikes upon its nuclear facilities violate the NPT, which grants countries an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear energy for nonmilitary purposes.
Nuclear experts warn that the U.S. strikes on Iran have undermined the credibility of the NPT, prompting some factions in Iran to call for the nation's exit altogether.
Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, suggested Monday that U.S. attacks may only embolden Iran and other nations to violate the treaty and pursue nuclear weapons, perceiving them as necessary for their protection.
"From a nonproliferation perspective, Trump's decision to strike Iran was a reckless, irresponsible escalation that is likely to push Iran closer to nuclear weapons in the long term," Davenport said. "Politically, there's greater impetus now to weaponize."
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How the US and Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran
The agency's chief has not only continued its subservience to U.S. and Western interests, but also its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Jun 23, 2025
Rafael Grossi, director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowed the IAEA to be used by the United States and Israel—an undeclared nuclear weapons state in long-term violation of IAEA rules—to manufacture a pretext for war on Iran, despite his agency’s own conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.
On June 12th, based on a damning report by Grossi, a slim majority of the IAEA Board of Governors voted to find Iran in non-compliance with its obligations as an IAEA member. Of the 35 countries represented on the Board, only 19 voted for the resolution, while 3 voted against it, 11 abstained and 2 did not vote.
The United States contacted eight board member governments on June 10th to persuade them to either vote for the resolution or not to vote. Israeli officials said they saw the U.S. arm-twisting for the IAEA resolution as a significant signal of U.S. support for Israel’s war plans, revealing how much Israel valued the IAEA resolution as diplomatic cover for the war.
The IAEA board meeting was timed for the final day of President Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. Even as the IAEA board voted, Israel was loading weapons, fuel and drop-tanks on its warplanes for the long flight to Iran and briefing its aircrews on their targets. The first Israeli air strikes hit Iran at 3 a.m. that night.
On June 20th, Iran filed a formal complaint against Director General Grossi with the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council for undermining his agency’s impartiality, both by his failure to mention the illegality of Israel’s threats and uses of force against Iran in his public statements and by his singular focus on Iran’s alleged violations.
The source of the IAEA investigation that led to this resolution was a 2018 Israeli intelligence report that its agents had identified three previously undisclosed sites in Iran where Iran had conducted uranium enrichment prior to 2003. In 2019, Grossi opened an investigation, and the IAEA eventually gained access to the sites and detected traces of enriched uranium.
Despite the fateful consequences of his actions, Grossi has never explained publicly how the IAEA can be sure that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency or its Iranian collaborators, such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (or MEK), did not put the enriched uranium in those sites themselves, as Iranian officials have suggested.
While the IAEA resolution that triggered this war dealt only with Iran’s enrichment activities prior to 2003, U.S. and Israeli politicians quickly pivoted to unsubstantiated claims that Iran was on the verge of making a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence agencies had previously reported that such a complex process would take up to three years, even before Israel and the United States began bombing and degrading Iran’s existing civilian nuclear facilities.
The IAEA’s previous investigations into unreported nuclear activities in Iran were officially completed in December 2015, when IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano published its “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program.”
The IAEA assessed that, while some of Iran’s past activities might have been relevant to nuclear weapons, they “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.” The IAEA “found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”
When Yukiya Amano died before the end of his term in 2019, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi was appointed IAEA Director General. Grossi had served as Deputy Director General under Amano and, before that, as Chief of Staff under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.
The Israelis have a long record of fabricating false evidence about Iran’s nuclear activities, like the notorious “laptop documents” given to the CIA by the MEK in 2004 and believed to have been created by the Mossad. Douglas Frantz, who wrote a report on Iran’s nuclear program for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, revealed that the Mossad created a special unit in 2003 to provide secret briefings on Iran’s nuclear program, using “documents from inside Iran and elsewhere.”
And yet Grossi collaborated with Israel to pursue its latest allegations. After several years of meetings in Israel and negotiations and inspections in Iran, he wrote his report to the IAEA Board of Governors and scheduled a board meeting to coincide with the planned start date for Israel’s war.
Israel made its final war preparations in full view of the satellites and intelligence agencies of the western countries that drafted and voted for the resolution. It is no wonder that 13 countries abstained or did not vote, but it is tragic that more neutral countries could not find the wisdom and courage to vote against this insidious resolution.
The official purpose of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.” Since 1965, all of its 180 member countries have been subject to IAEA safeguards to ensure that their nuclear programs are “not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”
The IAEA’s work is obviously compromised in dealing with countries that already have nuclear weapons. North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994, and from all safeguards in 2009. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China have IAEA safeguard agreements that are based only on “voluntary offers” for “selected” non-military sites. India has a 2009 safeguard agreement that requires it to keep its military and civilian nuclear programs separate, and Pakistan has 10 separate safeguard agreements, but only for civilian nuclear projects, the latest being from 2017 to cover two Chinese-built power stations.
Israel, however, has only a limited 1975 safeguards agreement for a 1955 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. An addendum in 1977 extended the IAEA safeguards agreement indefinitely, even though the cooperation agreement with the U.S. that it covered expired four days later. So, by a parody of compliance that the United States and the IAEA have played along with for half a century, Israel has escaped the scrutiny of IAEA safeguards just as effectively as North Korea.
Israel began working on a nuclear weapon in the 1950s, with substantial help from Western countries, including France, Britain and Argentina, and made its first weapons in 1966 or 1967. By 2015, when Iran signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a leaked email that a nuclear weapon would be useless to Iran because “Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran.” Powell quoted former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking, “What would we do with a nuclear weapon? Polish it?”
In 2003, while Powell tried but failed to make a case for war on Iraq to the UN Security Council, President Bush smeared Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” based on their alleged pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction.” The Egyptian IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, repeatedly assured the Security Council that the IAEA could find no evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon.
When the CIA produced a document that showed Iraq importing yellowcake uranium from Niger, just as Israel had secretly imported it from Argentina in the 1960s, the IAEA only took a few hours to recognize the document as a forgery, which ElBaradei immediately reported to the Security Council.
Bush kept repeating the lie about yellowcake from Niger, and other flagrant lies about Iraq, and the United States invaded and destroyed Iraq based on his lies, a war crime of historic proportions. Most of the world knew that ElBaradei and the IAEA were right all along, and, in 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for exposing Bush’s lies, speaking truth to power and strengthening nuclear non-proliferation.
In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with the IAEA’s finding that Iran, like Iraq, had no nuclear weapons program. As Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?” Even Bush couldn’t believe he would get away with recycling the same lies to destroy Iran as well as Iraq, and Trump is playing with fire by doing so now.
ElBaradei wrote in his own memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, that if Iran did do some preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it probably began during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, after the US and its allies helped Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians.
The neocons who dominate U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy viewed the Nobel Prize winner ElBaradei as an obstacle to their regime change ambitions around the world, and conducted a covert campaign to find a more compliant new IAEA Director General when his term expired in 2009.
After Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano was appointed as the new Director General, U.S. diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks revealed details of his extensive vetting by U.S. diplomats, who reported back to Washington that Amano “was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.”
After becoming IAEA Director General in 2019, Rafael Grossi not only continued the IAEA’s subservience to U.S. and Western interests and its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons, but also ensured that the IAEA played a critical role in Israel’s march to war on Iran.
Even as he publicly acknowledged that Iran had no nuclear weapons program and that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the West’s concerns about Iran, Grossi helped Israel to set the stage for war by reopening the IAEA’s investigation into Iran’s past activities. Then, on the very day that Israeli warplanes were being loaded with weapons to bomb Iran, he made sure that the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution to give Israel and the U.S. the pretext for war that they wanted.
In his last year as IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei faced a similar dilemma to the one that Grossi has faced since 2019. In 2008, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies gave the IAEA copies of documents that appeared to show Iran conducting four distinct types of nuclear weapons research.
Whereas, in 2003, Bush’s yellowcake document from Niger was clearly a forgery, the IAEA could not establish whether the Israeli documents were authentic or not. So ElBaradei refused to act on them or to make them public, despite considerable political pressure, because, as he wrote in The Age of Deception, he knew the U.S. and Israel “wanted to create the impression that Iran presented an imminent threat, perhaps preparing the grounds for the use of force.” ElBaradei retired in 2009, and those allegations were among the “outstanding issues” that he left to be resolved by Yukiya Amano in 2015.
If Rafael Grossi had exercised the same caution, impartiality and wisdom as Mohamed ElBaradei did in 2009, it is very possible that the United States and Israel would not be at war with Iran today.
Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in a tweet on June 17th 2025, “To rely on force and not negotiations is a sure way to destroy the NPT and the nuclear non-proliferation regime (imperfect as it is), and sends a clear message to many countries “that their 'ultimate security' is to develop nuclear weapons!!!”
Despite Grossi’s role in U.S.-Israeli war plans as IAEA Director General, or maybe because of it, he has been touted as a Western-backed candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as UN Secretary General in 2026. That would be a disaster for the world. Fortunately, there are many more qualified candidates to lead the world out of the crisis that Rafael Grossi has helped the U.S. and Israel to plunge it into.
Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA Director before he further undermines nuclear non-proliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war. And he should also withdraw his name from consideration as a candidate for UN Secretary General.
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UN Nuclear Chief Warns Israel's Bombing of Iranian Facility Risks Radiation Release
IAEA head Rafael Grossi implored "all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation."
Jun 16, 2025
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog cautioned Monday that Israel's bombing of Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility raises the risk of radiological and chemical contamination, a warning that came amid condemnation of such strikes and mounting civilian casualties on both sides of the widening war.
Addressing an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors in Vienna, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that "military escalation threatens lives, increases the chance of a radiological release with serious consequences for people and the environment, and delays indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon."
"Last week the board adopted an important resolution on Iran's safeguards obligations," Grossi continued. "The resolution, while containing important proliferation-related provisions, also stressed support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear program. Member states of the IAEA have a crucial, active role to play in supporting the urgent move away from military escalation towards diplomacy."
"Consistent with the objectives of the IAEA and its statute, I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation," he added.
Based on info available to the IAEA, this is the current situation at the Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow, Khondab, Bushehr, and Esfahan. pic.twitter.com/gTvJrYzPFW
— IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) June 16, 2025
The IAEA affirmed that Israeli strikes have damaged above-ground areas of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and another nuclear site in Isfahan. Grossi said earlier that four buildings in Isfahan had been damaged by Israeli strikes on Friday, but noted Monday that there were no apparent signs of damage to another enrichment plant at Fordow, which is deep underground.
Experts say it would likely take intervention by the United States—which has more powerful bunker-busting bombs than Israel—to destroy the Fordow site. U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that "it's possible" that American forces could enter the fight, while the apparent deployment of what The Times of Israel on Monday called an "unprecedented" number of U.S. Air Force aerial refueling planes fueled speculation of deeper American involvement in the war.
Grossi's warning came amid widening Israeli bombing of Iran and retaliatory Iranian strikes against Israel. Iran's Ministry of Health said Monday that 224 people—90% of them civilians—have been killed and over 1,400 others wounded by Israeli attacks. Iranian media reported serious damage to a hospital in the western city of Kermanshah following Israeli bombing.
Last week, Israel began bombing Iranian government, military, and nuclear sites and assassinating numerous Iranian nuclear scientists. Some of these attacks have also killed targeted scientists' relatives, neighbors, and other civilians. The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is attacking Iran in order to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. However, critics note that U.S. intelligence agencies concur that Iran is not trying to develop nukes.
As is the case with Gaza—where Israel is waging a war for which Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—numerous observers accuse the Israeli leader of creating a distraction from his ongoing criminal corruption trial in his own country.
On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said that Iran's legislative body, the Majlis, was drafting a bill that would withdraw the country from the landmark 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, at least 23 Israeli civilians including women and children and Palestinian citizens of Israel have been killed by Iranian missile and drone strikes that have been condemned as indiscriminate. Hundreds more Israelis have been wounded. Responding to these attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz—who is accused of supporting genocidal policies in Gaza—said over the weekend that Iran's capital "will burn" if Iranian forces did not stop responding to Israel's bombing.
"The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon," he vowed.
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