By John Irish and Francois Murphy<\/p>\n
PARIS\/VIENNA, June 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. is lobbying other countries on the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors to back a draft resolution demanding that Iran tell \u200cthe agency what happened to its bombed nuclear sites and the enriched uranium stored there.<\/p>\n
The U.S.-drafted text, \u200cseen by Reuters on Sunday and circulated ahead of this week’s quarterly meeting of the 35-nation board, risks complicating talks between Washington and \u200bTehran. Iran has typically retaliated against resolutions against it at the International Atomic Energy Agency, escalating its nuclear activities or scaling back cooperation.<\/p>\n
Previous IAEA board resolutions on Iran, submitted by the U.S., Britain, France and Germany, have passed by wide margins. One adopted in November demanded that Iran inform the agency “without delay” about the status of its enriched uranium stock \u200cand damaged sites – something that has yet \u2060to happen.<\/p>\n
STATEMENT OF INTENT<\/p>\n
The U.S. draft says Iran must “provide the Agency with precise information on nuclear material accountancy and safeguarded nuclear facilities in Iran” and grant “all access it requires to \u2060verify this information.” Both steps are described as “essential and urgent” and must be taken “without delay”.<\/p>\n
The text stops short of referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council, a move some diplomats had said was under consideration. That would have followed up on \u200ba June \u200b12, 2025 resolution declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation \u200bobligations.<\/p>\n
Israel began bombing Iran’s nuclear sites a day \u200clater.<\/p>\n
The U.S. mission to the IAEA declined to comment.<\/p>\n
While circulating a draft does not guarantee it will be formally submitted to the board, which would then vote on it, it signals an intention to do so.<\/p>\n
Current U.S.-Iran talks aim to extend their ceasefire and pave the way for broader negotiations, including on Iran’s nuclear programme. U.S. President Donald Trump has said his goal is to ensure Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons, something Iran denies seeking.<\/p>\n
RUSSIA ACCUSES \u200cU.S. OF UNDERMINING COOPERATION<\/p>\n
While June’s strikes destroyed or badly damaged uranium-enrichment \u200bfacilities, much of Iran’s enriched uranium is believed to have survived.<\/p>\n
Trump has \u200bsaid he wants Iran’s highly enriched uranium removed, \u200bparticularly what remains of the 440.9 kg (972 lbs) enriched to up to 60% purity – a \u200cshort step from roughly 90% weapons grade – that \u200bthe IAEA estimates Iran had \u200bwhen Israel first attacked. That amount would be enough, if further enriched, for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.<\/p>\n
Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA told reporters on Friday a resolution would only antagonise Iran.<\/p>\n
“It \u200bwas exactly the United States who \u200cundermined this cooperation,” he said, referring to the fact the IAEA had access to Iran’s sites \u200buntil the bombing started.<\/p>\n
Russia and China have opposed all recent resolutions against Iran.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John Irish \u200band Francois Murphy. Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Irish and Francois Murphy PARIS\/VIENNA, June 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. is lobbying other countries on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":851196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[347760,6109,14235,83,50,103],"class_list":["post-851195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-enriched-uranium","tag-iaea","tag-international-atomic-energy-agency","tag-iran","tag-news","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116710193964127351","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}