The United States and three European allies urged Tehran to immediately restore its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog in a draft resolution they submitted to the IAEA Board of Governors which will meet later this week in Vienna.
"Iran must ... provide the (International Atomic Energy) Agency without delay with precise information on nuclear material accountancy and safeguarded nuclear facilities in Iran," they wrote in the draft submitted on Tuesday.
The United States and its allies also demanded Tehran grant the Agency "all access it requires to verify this information," according to the draft resolution which diplomats cited by Reuters said is highly likely to be passed.
The IAEA board "calls upon Iran to act strictly in accordance with" the IAEA Additional Protocol "and to fully implement this measure without delay", the resolution added.
Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi warned earlier on Tuesday that an agreement Tehran signed with the UN nuclear watchdog in September would be compromised by the US-European IAEA resolution.
The Cairo deal allowed the IAEA to resume inspections at all declared Iranian nuclear facilities including those damaged in Israeli and US strikes in June.
But after the three European powers restored UN sanctions on Iran in late September through the so-called snapback mechanism, Iranian officials said the reimposed sanctions would “certainly halt” the deal.
Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammed Eslami said on Sunday that US and Israeli strikes on its civilian nuclear facilities during the June conflict had damaged the credibility of the UN nuclear watchdog, accusing the IAEA of failing to condemn the attacks.
Iran has yet to allow UN inspectors to visit nuclear sites hit by the Israeli and US airstrikes, the IAEA said in a confidential report last Wednesday, saying verification of Tehran’s enriched uranium “long overdue.”
“The Agency’s lack of access to this nuclear material in Iran for five months means that its verification is long overdue,” the IAEA said in a report to member states seen by Reuters.
"It is critical that the Agency is able to verify the inventories of previously declared nuclear material in Iran as soon as possible in order to allay its concerns ... regarding the possible diversion of declared nuclear material from peaceful use," the agency quoted the IAEA report as saying.
The Vienna-based nuclear watchdog has not been able to confirm the amount of enriched uranium in Iran’s possession since June, when Israeli and US strikes hit its main enrichment sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow during the 12-day conflict.
Before the attacks, inspectors had verified about 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity—enough, if further refined, for roughly 10 nuclear weapons under IAEA criteria.
