Ambassador to IAEA Statement: NPT Review Conference

Iran's Ambassador to the IAEA has delivered a statement during the NPT Review Conference. The full text of the statement is as follows:

Statement by
H.E. Mr. Reza Najafi
Ambassador and Permanent Representatives
of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Vienna
11th Session of the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Under Agenda Item 15: “General Debate”
29 April 2026, New York

In the Name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

 

Mr. President,

I congratulate you for assuming the presidency of this Conference and assure you of our fullest cooperation. My delegation also associates itself with the NAM statement.

We are meeting at a time when the international legal order is declining, and the hegemonic policies and unlawful use of force have fundamentally shattered the Treaty’s very foundations.

Only in less than nine months in 2025 and 2026, the world observed two wars of aggression by two nuclear-weapon possessors against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Both began under the pretexts related to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, using the Nazi propaganda technique of “Big Lie” -- repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.

For well over 1,700 weeks, the Israeli regime’s officials repeated this “Big Lie” that Iran is only a few weeks away from developing nuclear weapons. The aim was to divert attentions from its atrocities and its nuclear weapon program.

While all of Iran’s enriched uranium has always been under the IAEA’s fullest supervision and accounted for, even up to its last gram, and till now there is no report whatsoever about the diversion of even one gram of such material, the Americans falsely portrayed Iran’s enriched uranium as a danger.

Again, the aim was to distract attentions away from the 55 years of clear non-compliance of the US with its nuclear disarmament obligations, as well as to demonize Iran and to invade it.

But massive attacks on our civilian infrastructure, schools, universities, hospitals, bridges, homes, mosques, churches, synagogues, historical places, and the like, revealed the ugly truth.

They delusionally intended to destroy our integrity, independence and civilization, send us back to the “Stone Age,” and get our oil and gas!

But before that, they should have studied our history, our culture, and our civilization, to understand the meaning of “martyrdom” and the rationale behind a civilized nation’s resistance up to the last drop of its blood.

Likewise, they must have understood that contemporarily, we’ve been and are very well-known for defeating invaders and taking back our territory, sovereignty, independence, and oil and gas: our gravest crime in the lens of western invaders.

In their cowardly aggressions, our beloved leader - a man of peace and dignity with his well-known Fatwa on rejection of nuclear weapons and other WMDs - was martyred, along with him more than 3400 civilians.

Only in one case, in a triple-tap strike on a girl’s primary school in Minab, 168 innocent children, aged between 7 and 12, mercilessly torn to pieces. In a matter of moments, their angel-like faces and beautiful eyes were buried under the rubble; and with them, their dreams, joys, and laughter too.

In reaction to these brutal aggressions, the UN Security Council and the IAEA’s Board of Governor and its Director General failed to even issue a simple verbal condemnation. Worse still, resolutions were adopted against Iran, in which regrettably the victim replaced with the murderer, and no reference was made to either the crimes or names of the murderers!

These inaction, and indifference indicates that the world is rapidly moving down the slope of moral and legal decline. Does appeasement and silence towards the aggressors mean anything other than aiding and abetting them? Wouldn’t it result in emboldening them to commit more crimes more brutally against more nations?

Mr. President,

Let us now take a quick look at the challenges of the Treaty. On nuclear disarmament: global nuclear arsenals are expanding, thousands of nuclear warheads are on high-alert and ready for use, and the US, UK and France have started a new nuclear arms race and a new nuclear arms modernization race. These are the continuation of over 55 years of clear non-compliance with their explicit legal obligations on nuclear disarmament.

On nuclear non-proliferation: NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement continues to represent a direct operational proliferation mechanism, under which five non-nuclear-weapon States, including Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands host around 100 US nuclear weapons, and their pilots are trained for nuclear strike missions.

Additionally, German officials are brazenly and yet publicly advocating for the acquisition of nuclear weapons, France announced a nuclear alliance with European countries, and Australia together with the US and UK engaged in new proliferation arrangement under AUKUS.

These are actual proliferation cases and seriously breach the non-proliferation obligations of these States. However, we have all heard in this room over the past two days how representatives of the countries involved in these arrangements brazenly justify their actions, which are clear violations of Articles 1, 2, and 6 of the Treaty, while making baseless claims against Iran's peaceful nuclear program. Iran strongly condemns all such violations.

In the same context, it is more than 31 years that the 1995 resolution on the Middle East, an essential element of the Treaty’s indefinite extension, has not been implemented.

As a result, the Israeli regime has remained as the only non-party to the NPT in the region, its clandestine nuclear activities and facilities are outside the IAEA’s safeguards, possesses tens of nuclear warheads, and its officials brazenly threaten to use them, posing a grave threat to peace and security of the region and beyond.

On the peaceful uses of nuclear energy: a group of States continue to make persistent systematic efforts to demonize exercise of certain aspects of this inalienable right or artificially link them to proliferation concerns.

Additionally, safeguards are being implemented in a very discriminatory, politicized and highly restrictive manner to force States to abandon their inherent right to develop a full national nuclear fuel cycle.

The worst is that the US - one of the Treaty’s depositories - publicly and explicitly forces Iran to fully abandon the exercise of this inherent right.

And, when this unlawful demand was categorically rejected, the US, along with a nuclear armed non-party to the NPT, has waged two wars of aggression and massively targeted a State Party’s safeguarded peaceful nuclear facilities.

All these and similar policies and practices materially breach the Treaty, violate its object and purpose, and seriously jeopardize the delicate balance between the rights and obligations of the States Parties.

Mr. President,

These accumulated grave challenges reveal two realities: one, all Treaty pillars have shaken, cracked and fractured, putting the Treaty’s entirety at risk, and two, the western States, particularly the US, UK, France and Germany, are responsible for the most of these challenges, either through their 55-years of non-compliance with their nuclear disarmament obligations or Treaty’s violation in the form of nuclear-weapon sharing and arrangements like AUKUS.

We cannot ignore these stark realities, rather, we must act and act decisively. This requires, among others, adopting practical and balanced decisions to address the root causes of the Treaty’s challenges, depoliticizing the Treaty’s application, and stopping the instrumentalization of the IAEA and its safeguards system.

To that end, through its working papers, Iran has made concrete proposals which mainly focus on four key areas: unequivocal reaffirmation of absolute prohibition of any armed attack on safeguarded nuclear facilities, concrete time-bound plan for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons, a decisive decision on the Middle East, by compelling the Israeli regime to renounce the possession of nuclear weapons and to join the NPT, and finally, the reaffirmation of the inalienable right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in all its aspects including an inherent right to a full national nuclear fuel cycle.

Finally, the Islamic Republic of Iran will work towards adopting a balanced, substantive, and concrete Final Document.

I thank you, Mr. President.