In a joint statement published by the UK government after the September 2026 meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States said the Iranian safeguards file had reached a critical stage. The four governments thanked the IAEA Director General for his latest reports and restated support for the Agency’s independent verification work under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Their argument was straightforward. The safeguards system depends on timely access, current design information and routine inspection of declared nuclear material. When those conditions fall away, the Agency cannot provide the level of assurance expected by the Board or by UN member states.
The statement placed the present dispute in a clear sequence. In June 2025, the Board found Iran in non-compliance with its NPT Safeguards Agreement. In June 2026, the Board adopted a further resolution urging Iran to meet its legal obligations, restore full cooperation with the IAEA and provide the access needed to verify the status of its nuclear programme. According to the E3 and the US, the September 2026 reporting cycle shows no meaningful correction. They said Iran had again chosen not to respond to the Board’s concerns, despite having had more than a year after the original non-compliance finding and three months after the June 2026 resolution.
The central operational issue is loss of access. The Director General’s report, as described in the statement, records that the Agency received no information from Iran during the reporting period on the status of its declared nuclear facilities or declared nuclear material. The statement also says IAEA inspectors have had no access to declared nuclear facilities since June 2026. That matters because safeguards are not only about identifying undeclared activity. They also require the Agency to confirm that declared material remains accounted for and has not been diverted. The four governments said the IAEA is now unable to make that judgement in Iran’s case, which is why they treated the report as a compliance issue rather than a routine dispute over inspection logistics.
The statement gives particular weight to two points raised by the Director General. First, the Agency has lost visibility over Iran’s stockpile of high enriched uranium for more than a year. Second, the IAEA remains concerned about Iran’s fourth declared enrichment plant in Isfahan, where the Agency has not been given the precise location and has not been able to review design information or gain access. For policy readers, those details are significant because they go to the minimum information set required for effective safeguards. If the Agency does not know exactly where a declared facility is located, and cannot inspect it or assess its design, its ability to verify the declared nature and use of that facility is sharply reduced.
The four governments also used the statement to restate longstanding legal concerns beyond immediate access. They said Iran continues not to engage with the Agency on unresolved safeguards issues, is still failing to implement modified Code 3.1 under its safeguards agreement, and continues to disregard calls for implementation and ratification of the Additional Protocol. In practical terms, modified Code 3.1 concerns the early provision of design information for nuclear facilities. The Additional Protocol gives the IAEA broader tools for verification. The statement’s broader point is that the present dispute is not confined to one inspection request or one reporting period; it reflects a wider pattern in which the Agency says it lacks the cooperation needed to rebuild confidence.
The statement also ties the safeguards dispute back to the UN Security Council track. It notes that, in September 2025, the Security Council decided to reinstate six earlier resolutions requiring Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, reprocessing activity and heavy water-related projects, with compliance to be verified by the IAEA. The four governments said those obligations remain legally and operationally in force, whatever Iran’s objections to them. That is an important distinction in institutional terms. The IAEA Board is dealing with safeguards compliance under the NPT framework, while the Security Council resolutions create a separate set of obligations. The E3 and the US said the Agency has been unable to verify compliance on that front as well, because the underlying access problem has not been resolved.
On process, the statement explains why the US and the E3 tabled draft resolution GOV/2026/60. Their position is that the draft completes a procedural step required by the IAEA Statute after the June 2025 finding of non-compliance. They said the Board had delayed that action for more than a year to give Iran further opportunities to cooperate, but that those opportunities had not been used. The document therefore serves two purposes. It is an account of why the four governments believe the Board can no longer defer formal action, and it is a signal that they still see a route back to cooperation if Iran grants access and provides the transparency the Agency says it needs. The statement closes by asking that GOV/2026/60 be de-restricted if adopted, indicating that the sponsors want the Board’s decision and reasoning to enter the public record.