A senior Iranian lawmaker has stated that fellow members of the Islamic Republic’s parliament were considering a withdrawal from a multilateral treaty aimed at curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons after a series of unprecedented U.S. strikes.
To date, North Korea is the only nation to have acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and subsequently withdraw. One other country, South Sudan, opted not to accede to the treaty after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, joining India, Israel and Pakistan as the world’s only non-NPT states.
Pyongyang officially left the NPT in January 2003, just two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, citing concerns that the United States was planning a preemptive attack against North Korea, and went on to conduct the nation’s first nuclear weapons test in 2006.
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and has yet to signal any shift in its official doctrine. However, officials and lawmakers have increasingly questioned the nation’s commitment to the NPT and other international obligations in the wake of a campaign of strikes launched by Israel last week and joined by the U.S. on Saturday.
In what may be the most serious indication that such a move was being weighed, the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency cited Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesperson for the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, as saying Sunday that “a review of the NPT treaty and Iran’s non-membership in it were among the common demands” of lawmakers, which “are scheduled to be on the parliament’s agenda.”
He also said that “most members of the committee strongly criticized the performance of the International Atomic Energy Agency and called for the cessation of cooperation or suspension of relations with this institution.”
Reached for comment, the Iranian Mission to the United Nations shared with Newsweek remarks delivered Sunday to the U.N. Security Council by Iranian Permanent Representative Amir Saeid Iravani in which he made multiple references to the NPT and the international community’s apparent failure to uphold the non-proliferation regime.
Referencing Iran as “a responsible party to the UN Charter and the NPT and a non-nuclear weapon state,” he condemned the strikes conducted by the United States, “a permanent member of this Council, the depository of the NPT, and the only state that has ever used nuclear weapons, murdering millions in two cities” as well as Israel, “an outlaw nuclear-armed regime that refuses to join the NPT despite Security Council Resolution 487.”
He warned that, today, “there is no assurance that other NPT members will not face similar aggression.”
“The pattern is evident,” Iravani said. “The NPT, a cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime, has been manipulated into a political weapon. Instead of guaranteeing parties’ legitimate rights to peaceful nuclear energy, it has been exploited as a pretext for aggression and unlawful action that jeopardize the supreme interests of my country.”
Further inaction by the international community, he argued, would “lead to the gradual decline of the very aspiration of the non-proliferation regime and normalize a dangerous precedent where might overrides right and where the fundamental principles of the UN Charter are trampled without consequence.”
Newsweek has reached out to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for comment.
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Rezaei has previously urged for Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT on several occasions amid the deepening Iran-Israel conflict that has rocked the region since the Palestinian Hamas movement’s surprise attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
He has reiterated this call after Israel commenced a still-ongoing series of strikes targeting facilities and personnel tied to Iran’s armed forces and nuclear program last Thursday.
According to Article X of the NPT, which first came to effect in 1970, “each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”
In such a scenario, the country “shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance,” including “a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stated last Monday that Tehran would “take an appropriate decision” in relation to Iran’s NPT membership amid the Israeli strikes and that a bill was being prepared in parliament. Still, he emphasized Iran’s public commitment against developing nuclear weapons.
Despite Iranian denials, Israeli officials have alleged that Iran had already obtained enough nuclear material to produce up to 15 nuclear weapons. The country has ramped up enrichment since President Donald Trump withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran and major powers in 2018.
As of March, U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard had assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Trump has since repeatedly characterized her assessment as “wrong” as he defended Israel’s campaign, which came in the midst of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, and prepared to order U.S. strikes against three key Iranian nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Fordow and Natanz.
Despite the official ban, debate has intensified in Iran about the prospect of obtaining a nuclear weapon throughout the worsening conflict with Israel, with which Iran had twice traded direct strikes prior to the current battle. Iranian experts and former officials have previously told Newsweek such a move could not be ruled in the event that the Islamic Republic’s leadership felt the survival of the state was under threat.
Last week, Tehran-based security analyst Alireza Taghavania told Newsweek that the Israeli operations, backed by Trump, have “strengthened the position of those in Iran who wanted to build nuclear weapons,” and that, “Now, most Iranians want to build nuclear weapons.”
In May 2024, the Iranian Mission to the U.N. told Newsweek that “in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, all of which are subject to monitoring and inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, there exists a possibility of Iran reconsidering its collaboration within the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.”
The IAEA is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog and is tasked with verifying the compliance of member states with the NPT.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi had previously accused Iran of failing to uphold its non-proliferation agreements, though he has also warned that “attacks on nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic of Iran have caused a sharp degradation in nuclear safety and security in Iran.”
“A diplomatic solution is within reach if the necessary political will is there. Elements for an agreement have been discussed,” Grossi told an emergency U.N. Security Council session on Friday, a day before the U.S. strikes in Iran. “The IAEA can guarantee, through a watertight inspections system, that nuclear weapons will not be developed in Iran. They can form the basis of a long-standing agreement that brings peace and avoids a nuclear crisis in the Middle East.”
“This opportunity should not be missed,” he added. “The alternative would be a protracted conflict and a looming threat of nuclear proliferation that, while emanating from the Middle East, would effectively erode the NPT and the non-proliferation regime as a whole.”
The U.S. strikes have divided the world’s eight other nuclear powers. China, Russia and Pakistan have condemned the strikes; the United Kingdom offered cautious support and joined France and India in calling for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy, while Israel has praised Trump’s move.
North Korea has yet to issue an official response to the U.S. raid but has repeatedly condemned Israel’s operations in Iran as well as U.S. support for them.
“The international community is strictly watching the U.S. and Western forces who fan up the flames of war by taking issue with the legitimate sovereign right and the exercise of the right to self-defence of Iran, the victim, far from condemning Israel for getting frantic with the territorial expansion, pushing the situation in the Middle East to an uncontrollable catastrophic phase,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement published Thursday.
The spokesperson added: “The Zionists who brought a new war to the Middle East and the behind-the-scene forces who zealously patronize and support them will be held totally responsible for destroying international peace and security.”
Meanwhile, Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that among the consequences of the U.S. attacks would be “the enrichment of nuclear material—and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons—will continue.”