Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran is committed to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), dismissing speculation that Iran would leave the accord in response to major attacks by Israel and the United States on its nuclear and other sites.
Araghchi also said on Thursday that Iran will honour its safeguards agreement with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite recently passing a law to suspend cooperation with the agency.
Safeguards agreements between the IAEA and NPT signatories allow the UN agency to ensure that the countries’ nuclear programmes remain peaceful.
“Iran remains committed to the NPT and its Safeguards Agreement,” Araghchi wrote in a social media post.
“In accordance with the new legislation by Majlis [parliament], sparked by the unlawful attacks against our nuclear facilities by Israel and the US, our cooperation with [the IAEA] will be channelled through Iran’s Supreme National Security Council for obvious safety and security reasons.”
It is not clear how that cooperation will proceed or when and how IAEA inspectors will be granted access to Iran’s nuclear sites.
Araghchi’s comment was made in response to a German Federal Foreign Office statement decrying the Iranian legislation against the IAEA as a “devastating message”.
The Iranian foreign minister hit out at the criticism by Germany – one of Israel’s most committed allies that backed the attacks against Iran last month.
At the height of Israel’s strikes, which were launched without direct provocation, Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested Germany and the West are benefitting from the war.
“This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” he said. The remarks earned him praise from Israeli officials and caused outrage in some other quarters.
On Thursday, Araghchi rebuked “Germany’s explicit support for Israel’s unlawful attack on Iran, including safeguarded nuclear sites, as ‘dirty work’ carried out on behalf of the West”.
He also accused Berlin of repudiating its commitments under the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran by demanding zero enrichment by Iran.
The pact – which US President Donald Trump torpedoed during his first term in 2018 – allows Iran to enrich uranium at a low grade under a strict monitoring regime.
“‘Iranians were already put off by Germany’s Nazi-style backing of Genocide in Gaza, and its support for Saddam’s war on Iran by providing materials for chemical weapons,” Araghchi said in a post on X.
“The explicit German support for the bombing of Iran has obliterated the notion that the German regime harbours anything but malice towards Iranians.”
Companies from the former West Germany have long been accused by Iran of helping late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein develop chemical weapons, which he used against Iranian forces during the war between the two countries in the 1980s.
Iran has been calling on Germany to investigate its ties to Iraq’s chemical weapons, but Berlin has not publicly acknowledged any role in the programme.
Germany and other European countries came out in support of Israel in its recent 12-day war with Iran, which killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists and their family members, as well as top military officials.
The US joined the Israeli campaign last month, bombing three Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran retaliated against the US attack with a missile strike against an airbase in Qatar where US soldiers are stationed. Hours later, a ceasefire was reached.
Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of noncompliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.
International law offers special protection to nuclear sites due to the high risk of an environmental disaster if attacks result in the leak of radioactive material.
The state of the Iranian nuclear programme after the US and Israeli strikes remains unclear.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon said the US bombing operation set back Iran’s nuclear programme by one to two years.
But IAEA chief Rafael Grossi recently said Iran could be enriching uranium again in a “matter of months”. Enrichment is the process of enhancing the purity of radioactive uranium atoms to produce nuclear fuel.
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking a nuclear weapon while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal of dozens of atomic bombs.
