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US-E3 Draft Resolution at IAEA Board Demands Swift Cooperation From Iran
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives for the quarterly board of governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
Europe’s top three powers and the US have submitted a draft resolution to this week’s meeting of the UN atomic watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors demanding answers and access from Iran over its bombed nuclear sites and enriched uranium stock.
Diplomats said the draft resolution submitted by France, Britain, Germany, and the United States on Tuesday and seen by Reuters is highly likely to be passed as early as Wednesday. It follows a damning International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran sent to member states last week.
That report said Tehran has still not let inspectors into the nuclear sites Israel and the United States bombed in June and that accounting for the uranium stock is “long overdue.”
Iran has still not informed the IAEA of the status either of those sites or that stock, which includes material enriched to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade.
“Iran must … provide the [International Atomic Energy] agency without delay with precise information on nuclear material accountancy and safeguarded nuclear facilities in Iran, and grant the agency all access it requires to verify this information,” read the draft text.
IRAN WARNS OF RETALIATION
The draft resolution stops well short of finding Iran in breach of its obligations, as a resolution in June did just before Israel attacked, but Iran has warned that it will retaliate against any resolution targeting it.
“Should this draft resolution be adopted, it will unavoidably and adversely affect the positive course of cooperation between Iran and the IAEA,” Iran‘s mission to the IAEA said on X on Friday, calling the push for a resolution a “major mistake.”
Iran and the IAEA announced an agreement in September that was supposed to pave the way towards a full resumption of inspections and accounting of Iran‘s enriched uranium, but Tehran has since said it is void.
Western diplomats had billed the draft resolution as mainly technical, giving fresh instructions to the IAEA to report on Iran‘s nuclear activities after a 10-year mandate from 2015, the year of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, expired.
Yet it included not only language admonishing Iran for its poor cooperation and calling for a diplomatic solution – an apparent reference to possible talks with the US – but also a demand that Iran implement the so-called Additional Protocol expanding IAEA powers.
BROADER, MORE INTRUSIVE OVERSIGHT
Implementing the Additional Protocol, which Iran signed in 2003 but never ratified, was a cornerstone of the 2015 deal, which lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for tight restrictions on its nuclear activities.
The Additional Protocol grants the IAEA broader and more intrusive oversight of a country’s nuclear activities, such as the power to carry out snap inspections at undeclared locations.
The 2015 deal unraveled after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of it in 2018. Iran retaliated by abandoning the restrictions, including the Additional Protocol.
“[The IAEA board] calls upon Iran to act strictly in accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol that it signed on 18 December 2003, and to fully implement this measure without delay,” the draft said.
It also requested the IAEA to provide additional details in its reports, such as where Iran‘s uranium stockpile is stored and its inventory of uranium-enriching centrifuges.
The IAEA lost oversight of Iran‘s centrifuge stock when Iran stopped implementing the Additional Protocol in 2021. The IAEA currently only has the authority to monitor the centrifuges at Iran‘s declared enrichment facilities, which were destroyed or badly damaged in the Israeli and US military attacks.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.