No state can rewrite NPT to undermine Tehran’s right to nuclear energy: Iran at UN
Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations has defended his country’s inalienable right to peaceful nuclear energy, accusing the United States and Israel of waging two "wars of aggression" against Iranian facilities and warning that no single nation can unilaterally rewrite the global Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Addressing the UN General Assembly, Ambassador Gholamhossein Darzi pushed back against Western pressure, asserting that Article IV of the NPT guarantees all state parties the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy, including the full nuclear fuel cycle.
“The United States seeks to deny Iran that right while claiming to uphold the Treaty,” Darzi declared. “No State can unilaterally rewrite the Treaty or impose its own political veto.”
The Iranian envoy leveled severe accusations against Washington and Tel Aviv, stating they had launched two distinct "wars of aggression" against Iran in 2025 and 2026.
Crucially, he noted that these military strikes specifically targeted nuclear facilities that were under the strict safeguards and monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Darzi condemned the silence of the international community, pointing out that neither the IAEA’s leadership nor the UN Security Council has formally condemned the attacks on safeguarded civilian infrastructure.
He denounced the "blatant" hypocrisy of the international system for pressuring the victim of military aggression while allowing the aggressors to escape accountability.
Regarding IAEA inspections, Darzi clarified that Tehran has neither abandoned nor formally suspended its safeguards obligations.
However, he stressed that the military attacks have fundamentally altered security conditions on the ground, making physical inspections unsafe without adequate security guarantees.
"Responsibility for those circumstances rests with the aggressors, not Iran," he asserted.
The collapse of nuclear diplomacy is deeply rooted in the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018.
Following the US withdrawal under the Trump administration, Washington reimposed crippling economic sanctions under a "maximum pressure" campaign, effectively killing the economic incentives of the nuclear deal.
Since then, the US has consistently used its diplomatic leverage to lobby the IAEA Board of Governors to pass resolutions censuring Iran, a move Tehran views as the weaponization of a technical agency for political coercion.
Furthermore, the US has provided diplomatic cover, intelligence, and military support for Israeli sabotage operations and direct military strikes against Iranian nuclear and scientific infrastructure over the past several years.
In response to the US breaking the JCPOA and the subsequent European failure to offset US sanctions, Iran gradually and legally reduced its voluntary IAEA commitments under the treaty's provisions. This included removing advanced surveillance cameras and increasing uranium enrichment levels.
However, tensions reached a breaking point following the US and Israeli military strikes in 2025 and 2026. Because the targeted facilities were legally registered as peaceful and under IAEA safeguards, the military attacks created an unprecedented crisis for the nuclear watchdog.
Iran has repeatedly argued that the IAEA cannot demand routine, intrusive inspections of facilities that are actively being bombed by Western-backed military forces.