Adedokun Waliyu 
The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a U.S.-backed resolution on Wednesday telling Iran to declare its remaining enriched uranium stocks and let inspectors verify them, which could complicate Washington’s talks with Tehran.
The move came within hours of the U.S. and Iran trading military strikes after U.S. PresidentDonald Trumpsaid Iran had downed a U.S. Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli and U.S. attacks last June destroyed or badly damaged Iranian uranium-enrichment plants but much of the enriched uranium they produced, including material close to weapons grade, is thought to have survived.
Iran still has not informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of the fate of that material, or let IAEA inspectors return to the bombed sites to check.
The U.S. led the push for the resolution, but Iran has called it “whitewashing military aggression,” since inspectors had access before the strikes.
The resolution text submitted by the U.S., Britain, France andGermany was passed with 21 votes in favour, three against and 10 abstentions, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said. Those opposing were Russia, China and Niger, they said.
“Not only do Iran’s actions raise urgent concerns regarding the nature of its nuclear programme, they also threaten the very integrity of the global nuclear safeguards regime,” the four Western powers said in a statement to the board.
Asked how Iran would respond, its ambassador to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters that Tehran would decide.
“Without addressing the root causes of the present situation, the resolution focuses exclusively on their consequences and makes a number of excessive demands (on) Iran,” he said after the vote.
Iran’s mission to the IAEA had warned the board to be “cautious on the path forward.” Iran bristles at resolutions against it, and has responded to previous ones by escalating its atomic activities or scaling back cooperation with the IAEA.
The resolution said Iran should “provide the Agency with complete information on nuclear material inventories” and grant the IAEA the access it needs to verify that “without delay.”
The U.S. and Iran are in talks aimed at extending their ceasefire and paving the way for wider negotiations on issues including Iran’s nuclear programme.
Trump appeared to express frustration at the negotiations.
“Iran is all talk and no action,” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday. “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”
Trump has said that Iran must not be able to produce a nuclear weapon, and Iran says it never would.
A key aim of Trump’s is removing Iran’s enriched uranium, particularly the 440.9 kg enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from the roughly 90% of weapons grade, the IAEA estimates Iran had until the first Israeli strikes on June 13, 2025.
That is enough, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. How much of it remains is unclear.
