Mr. Chairman,

We fully align ourselves with the contents of the Joint Statement delivered by the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the People’s Republic of China, particularly with regard to the legal invalidity of the current formulation of this agenda item and of the corresponding report of the IAEA Director General. We would also like to make the following remarks in our national capacity.

We have reviewed the Director General’s report on the implementation of the Safeguards Agreement in Iran. We consider it important that the head of the Secretariat has sought to provide an objective assessment of developments over the past year. The report clearly demonstrates that the current safeguards situation in Iran did not arise in a vacuum, but is the direct result of two waves of unprovoked and unlawful aggression by the United States and Israel against nuclear facilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran under IAEA safeguards, including four direct strikes on the perimeter of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on 17, 24 and 27 March, and 4 April. Moreover, the renewed wave of U.S.-Israeli aggression, which began on 28 February, effectively erased even the modest yet important progress recorded in the Director General’s previous quarterly report submitted to the March session of the Board of Governors. As colleagues will recall, at that time the Agency had been able to conduct verification activities at all Iranian nuclear facilities that had not been affected by military strikes. Following the second wave of attacks, even that level of verification can no longer be taken for granted. In this regard, we welcome the inspection conducted at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant from 1 to 3 June despite the prevailing circumstances. This confirms Iran’s readiness to continue working with the Agency.

We do not dispute that the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA constitutes a legally binding instrument. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the fact that we are currently dealing with an unprecedented emergency situation. This is also reflected in the Director General’s report. Such circumstances are neither envisaged nor regulated by the Safeguards Agreement. Therefore, demands addressed to Iran for the immediate resumption of inspections - particularly when voiced by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, whose reckless actions brought about the present situation - are entirely inappropriate.

We consider the Iranian side’s requirement to receive guarantees against the resumption of hostilities and to secure a durable and permanent peaceful settlement as a condition for the restoration of IAEA verification activities in the country to be justified. This position is entirely understandable given that the United States and Israel have twice launched military aggression against Iran in the midst of a diplomatic process between Tehran and Washington, a process in which, incidentally, the Director General of the IAEA was also engaged.

Mr. Chairman,

Against this backdrop, the cynicism of the U.S. initiative to table yet another anti-Iranian resolution is simply staggering. The United States and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards in June 2025 and again in February–March 2026. The Agency had been conducting regular verification activities at those facilities and had detected no indications whatsoever of the diversion of nuclear material to undeclared purposes. The United States and Israel simply used alleged non-proliferation concerns as a pretext for their unprovoked aggression. The United Kingdom, Germany and France, for their part, acted as accomplices.

The United States and the E3 now present a draft resolution demanding that Tehran provide access to the Agency. We would like to recall that, prior to June 2025, the IAEA had all the access it required to declared nuclear facilities in Iran. If colleagues wished that situation to continue, they should not have attacked those facilities.

The timing chosen for the introduction of this draft resolution is equally remarkable. It has been tabled precisely at a moment when the parties are exchanging military strikes. Under such circumstances, and pardon my frankness, the draft can only be perceived as a farce. Its adoption under current conditions would demonstrate the inability of the Board of Governors to establish priorities in accordance with the realities of international politics.

No amount of language expressing “support for the Director General” can conceal the true intentions of the sponsors of this resolution: namely, to compensate for the failure of their reckless military aggression against Iran and for the inability of the United States to advance its anti-Iranian agenda at the Eleventh NPT Review Conference. In the Board of Governors, the co-sponsors may find it easier to achieve their objective by relying on the numerical majority of Western states. We would also recall that the Director General has not requested this policy-making body to take any extraordinary action in this regard. What we are witnessing instead is an attempt to shift responsibility for the access-related problems caused by the aggressor onto the victim of that aggression.

The cost of such manipulation of the Board is already well known. Not once have such counterproductive steps led to positive results. In June 2025, a Board resolution was used by Israel to justify its aggression; in November 2025, another resolution undermined the implementation of the Cairo understandings agreed between Iran and the IAEA. Yet another provocative resolution at the present juncture risks having highly detrimental consequences for Iran’s cooperation with the Agency, as well as for the ongoing diplomatic efforts conducted with the mediation of Pakistan and Qatar. Those efforts remain the key to achieving a comprehensive and sustainable cessation of hostilities, which in turn would create the conditions necessary for the resumption of substantive and constructive cooperation between Iran and the IAEA. We fully support this negotiating process.

In this regard, we call upon all responsible members of the Board of Governors to choose common sense and diplomacy and to withhold support from this biased, counterproductive and misguided draft resolution. The Russian Federation requests that the draft resolution be put to a vote and will vote against it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.