After the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors passed a resolution Thursday calling on Iran to grant access to all nuclear facilities and provide information on its enriched uranium stockpiles, Iran announced that it would cease allowing the UN watchdog to conduct any inspections in the country.  

After the agency's rebuke, Iran announced that the Cairo Agreement, a recent cooperation arrangement between Tehran and the IAEA that vaguely committed Tehran to providing the agency access to its nuclear sites, is no longer valid. 

The resolution, submitted by the United States and the United Kingdom, France and Germany — the European signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — noted that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles have not been subject to IAEA verification for more than five months. It urged Iran to meet its obligations under UN Security Council resolutions and allow inspectors to access the sites. 

The passed with 19 out of 35 votes, with China, Russia and Niger voting against. Twelve countries abstained.

“Our message is clear: Iran must resolve its safeguards issues without delay,” a bloc of Western countries said in a statement after the vote, adding, “It must provide practical cooperation through access, answers, restoration of monitoring, to enable the agency to do its job and help rebuild confidence.”

The resolution also requested that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi report on the implementation of Iran’s Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement and the six UNSC resolutions reactivated under the snapback mechanism. The measure, adopted by the Security Council in late September, restored the pre-2015 sanctions on Iran that had previously been lifted, including prohibitions on uranium enrichment and a full arms embargo, among other restrictions. 

In a post on X in Farsi following the resolution’s passage by the board, the Iranian foreign minister wrote, “By taking this action and ignoring Iran's interactions and goodwill, these countries are invalidating the agency and its independence and disrupting the process of interactions and cooperation between the agency and Iran.”

He added that Iran has sent “an official letter to the IAEA Director General that the agreement is no longer valid and is considered terminated," referring to the Cairo Agreement with the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, in September. At the time, Grossi said both sides had agreed on “practical modalities to resume inspection activities in Iran,” but the specific terms and scope remained unclear.