In this column, Ludovica Castelli says that, in Iran’s eyes, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been impotent in enforcing international law in relation to the strikes against it earlier this year by Israel and the US. Likewise, the international community − by allowing such attacks to go unpunished – is also at fault. The views expressed belong solely to the author and do not reflect her government’s position, any affiliated institutions, or that of BASIC.
The 69th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), held from 15 to 19 September, became the stage for renewed debate over the physical protection of nuclear facilities against attacks. The Iranian delegation − elected to serve as vice president of the Conference − seized the opportunity to catalyse the attention on the June 2025 strikes against its nuclear infrastructure, jointly conducted by Israel and the United States. For observers familiar with the history of attacks on nuclear facilities in the region, Tehran’s rhetoric carried a marked sense of historical resonance. It recalled, in particular, the well-known correspondence between Reza Amrollahi, then President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and IAEA Director General Hans Blix in the mid-1980s, when Iraq repeatedly targeted the Bushehr reactor during the Iran–Iraq War.
At the time, Iraq’s attacks provoked no significant international response or condemnation, as international concern over the broader Iran–Iraq conflict appeared to take precedence. The UN Security Council adopted resolutions that merely “[d]eplore[d] the initial acts which gave rise to the conflict”, expressed continuing concern about the hostilities, and called for an immediate ceasefire between the two parties. From 1981 onward, all UN and IAEA resolutions addressing attacks on nuclear facilities consistently revolved around three themes – negotiating general protections for nuclear installations, condemning Israeli military action against Iraq’s nuclear installations, and reaffirming the provisions of Article IV of the NPT on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy – without ever offering direct or sustained condemnation of Iraq’s strikes.
“Israel’s justification was widely judged to be incompatible with the rules and norms of the non-proliferation regime. Yet the politics of condemnation followed a markedly different trajectory.”
It was against this backdrop that, on 26 April 1985, Reza Amrollahi sent a lengthy letter to Hans Blix, characterising the preceding 12 months as a “harsh reality that an august international body such as the IAEA is either totally impotent in observing and/or implementing its own adopted resolutions or else, and here more disturbingly, is strongly biased in its dealings with the relevant affairs of its various member states”. He castigated both the IAEA’s failure to respond to Iraq’s bombardments of Bushehr and what he described as the “blatant disregard” of resolutions prohibiting military attacks on nuclear installations intended for peaceful purposes, attributing this inaction to the “full support and tacit approval of the controlling powers within the relevant international institutions”.
Director General Blix, for his part, responded by citing Article 56 of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the “operative” paragraph 1 of Resolution 407 adopted in October 1983 by the IAEA General Conference, which prohibited all armed attacks against nuclear installations devoted to peaceful uses. Nevertheless, he maintained that there were “no sufficient ground[s]” to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Board of Governors, noting in particular that the Bushehr reactor was “not yet completed” and contained “no fissionable material” that could pose a danger.
For Tehran, this exchange epitomised both the “impotency” of the IAEA and the complicity of the international community in allowing such attacks to go unpunished – and, by extension, normalised.
Four decades later, Mohammad Eslami’s address to the 69th General Conference struck a strikingly similar chord. The June 2025 strikes, he declared, were not only “a criminal and cowardly act of aggression” but also “a direct assault on the credibility of the Agency and the integrity of its safeguards system”. Echoing Mr Amrollahi’s rhetoric in 1985, Mr Eslami invoked Article 2(4) of the UN Charter alongside a series of IAEA resolutions to underline the illegality of armed attacks on safeguarded nuclear installations. Like Mr Amrollahi, he also cited UN Security Council Resolution 487 (1981) − which condemned Israel’s attack on Osirak − as a precedent, before posing a rhetorical question that closely paralleled Iran’s appeals of the 1980s: What meaning can the safeguards system retain if safeguarded facilities may be bombed with impunity?
Mr Eslami’s intervention in 2025 thus echoed not only Iran’s long-standing mistrust of the IAEA and its perception of the Agency’s compromised independence, but also the broader pattern of international silence that characterised both the 1980s and the June strikes.
In the more recent case, the politics of condemnation has been quite striking. The European Union − through its High Representative − issued a strongly worded statement expressing its “deepest concern” at the escalation and reaffirming its commitment to regional security and international law. Yet it refrained from declaring the strikes illegal or unjustifiable.
Member states were divided: roughly half endorsed Israel’s right to self-defence, while others questioned the legality of the attacks. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron explicitly supported Israel’s position, with Mr Merz notably framing Israel’s actions as “doing the dirty work for all of us”. The G7 similarly affirmed Israel’s right to self-defence, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted Iran’s destabilising role in the region, further complicating any unified normative stance.
On 23 June, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte added that he did not consider the US strikes on Iran to constitute a violation of international law. The EU, accordingly, refrained from issuing a unified statement either endorsing or rejecting the use of force.
Yet the most striking parallel was not only in the language of condemnation, but also in the diplomatic manoeuvring that unfolded behind the scenes of the IAEA General Conference. On 15 September, Bloomberg reported that the Iranian delegation planned to circulate a draft resolution declaring the targeting of nuclear facilities during the 12-day war a violation of international law. “If they want to obey the law of the jungle and the rule of coercion and force, it’ll end in chaos,” Mr Eslami warned. “But if they want to abide by international law, they need to discuss this draft resolution.” Iranian officials simultaneously criticised Director General Rafael Grossi for failing to condemn the strikes, arguing that such a response was both an “obligation” and a “responsibility” of his office.
Only days later, however, on 19 September, the Associated Press confirmed that Iran had withdrawn the draft at the last minute. Western diplomats quoted in the article suggested that the US had engaged in intensive lobbying to prevent its adoption, reportedly threatening to reduce its financial contributions to the Agency should the resolution pass, particularly if it entailed restrictions on Israel’s membership rights. Addressing the Conference that same day, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Reza Najafi, announced that, “guided by the spirit of goodwill and constructive engagement, and at the request of several member states”, Iran would defer consideration of the resolution until the following year. The text of the draft nonetheless left little ambiguity: it “strongly condemned” the “deliberate and unlawful attacks carried out in June 2025 against nuclear sites and facilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, described them as a “clear violation of international law”, and reaffirmed that “all states must refrain from attacking or threatening to attack peaceful nuclear facilities in other countries”.
This episode recalled an earlier precedent: Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. At the time, the prevailing assessment framed the attack as follows: a non-NPT member state targeted the peaceful nuclear facilities of an NPT member state that was in full compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement, and the attack occurred outside the context of an active war. Consequently, Israel’s justification was widely judged to be incompatible with the rules and norms of the non-proliferation regime. Yet the politics of condemnation followed a markedly different trajectory.
Despite broad international censure, the immediate outcome was limited. The General Conference adopted only a resolution rejecting Israel’s credentials to participate in that year’s session. When a motion to suspend Israel from the IAEA came to a vote on 24 September 1982, it was defeated due to opposition or abstentions from several European states. In the hours preceding the vote, the US delegation engaged in intensive lobbying, pressing delegates individually to reconsider their positions in the light of Washington’s warnings. According to the personal recollections of Roger Kirk, US Resident Representative to the IAEA from 1978 to 1983, American diplomats even canvassed the Hofburg Café, where representatives gathered prior to the session, highlighting the potential consequences of US disengagement from the Agency.
While some delegates indicated a willingness to revise their votes, most were reportedly caught off guard and lacked time to consult their capitals. Ultimately, the US succeeded in limiting the scope of punitive measures. The General Conference merely rejected Israel’s credentials for participation, while Director General Sigvard Eklund subsequently confirmed that Israel’s membership remained intact and that it would continue to enjoy all rights and privileges of an IAEA member state.
In the contemporary context, the Iranian delegation appears to be pursuing a UN resolution aimed at strengthening protections for civilian nuclear infrastructure, while the IAEA has been working towards the same direction in response to Russia’s repeated attacks on Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. In principle, the objectives are aligned and constructive; yet the narratives diverge, and both are shaped by profound mutual distrust.
What emerges is not simply continuity in Iran’s discourse, but a broader pattern that exposes the structural fragility of protective norms. The nuclear security regime keeps being tainted by the same restricted scope, and the same ‘relativism’ that allows protection to be suspended at the subjective discretion of military officials. In parallel, these limited protections have proven vulnerable to reinterpretation, instrumentalisation, and diplomatic bargaining. The result is a credibility gap that underscores both the extent to which these norms can be stretched and the persistent paucity of mechanisms for formal accountability.
These echoes of the past thus reveal more than rhetorical repetition; they highlight the cyclical nature of norm contestation within the non-proliferation “order”. Unless mechanisms of accountability are institutionalised, the physical protection of nuclear facilities will remain hostage to political expediency, and the legitimacy of the regime itself will continue to be unsettled and contested.
Ludovica Castelli is Project Manager of the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). She manages the Programme’s activities within the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium (EUNPDC) and leads research on non-proliferation and disarmament. Ludovica holds a PhD from the University of Leicester, where she was part of the ERC-funded “Third Nuclear Age” project. Her work focuses on Critical Security Studies, conceptual history, and nuclear studies, with a focus on the Middle East. She has presented her work at numerous academic and Track 1.5 venues across the US, the Middle East, and Europe. Her work has been published in academic journals − including The Non-proliferation Review and Middle East Journal − as well as in policy papers and commentaries. She is co-author of the book The Global Third Nuclear Age (Routledge, 2025) and is currently working on her first monograph based on her doctoral thesis.