TEHRAN -- Iran on Friday warned that the politicization of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is turning the UN nuclear body into an instrument for providing political and legal justification for military aggression, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei saying the agency’s director general is undermining its impartiality and independence.
In a post on X, Baghaei said the IAEA’s authority rests on “technical expertise, impartiality, and independence,” but that Director General Rafael Grossi has transformed the agency into “a link in a chain connecting technical reporting to political justification, and political justification to war.”
“When IAEA reports become raw material for threat narratives and for the construction of a political and legal case against a country, the line between technical oversight and laying the groundwork for military aggression becomes dangerously blurred,” Baghaei said.
He warned that the issue goes beyond reputational damage to the UN nuclear agency, saying the IAEA’s “most valuable asset — its credibility as an impartial and independent authority — is being squandered.”
Baghaei’s warning came after the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution requesting Grossi to report Iran to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. The resolution, co-sponsored by Britain, France and Germany, received 23 votes in favor, while Russia, China and Niger voted against it and eight countries abstained.
Iran has rejected the resolution as politically driven and technically unfounded, maintaining that its nuclear program is peaceful and that the agency’s reporting is being used to create a pretext for further pressure and military action.
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei described the resolution as “illegal, technically unfounded, entirely political, and unacceptable,” saying it bore “the clear imprint of U.S. and Zionist pressure.”
“The IAEA’s politicized & disruptive actions will push countries toward withdrawing from the NPT,” Rezaei warned.
The latest dispute followed Grossi’s claim that the agency had observed construction activity at Iran’s Mount Kolang, near the Natanz nuclear facility. 
Iran has challenged the use of such assessments as a basis for political or military action. Baghaei said that once IAEA credibility is subordinated to political agendas, the agency could become an instrument for “rationalizing and facilitating aggression.”
He also pointed to the precedent of the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities, which Tehran says demonstrated the dangers of allowing political interpretations of technical assessments to become grounds for military action.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Western powers have “inverted accountability” by attacking Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities, disrupting the normal verification process and then using that disruption as the basis for further action against Tehran.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Reza Najafi, described the latest resolution as a “political tool,” saying Tehran will continue cooperation with the IAEA “to the extent that circumstances and safety permit.”
The dispute has also moved to the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have rejected Western efforts to revive the so-called snapback mechanism under the 2015 nuclear agreement. 
Moscow and Beijing state that UN Security Council Resolution 2231 expired on October 18, 2025, ending the legal framework underpinning the mechanism.
Iran’s UN envoy Gholamhossein Darzi likewise said the resolution has expired and that the E3 — Britain, France and Germany — have no legal standing to invoke snapback because of their own failure to meet their obligations under the JCPOA and Resolution 2231.
Tehran, however, says the central issue is the protection of the non-proliferation regime itself. Iran has stressed that it has been a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1970 and has undergone extensive IAEA monitoring for decades.
Iranian officials also say the agency’s ability to conduct normal verification was disrupted by the U.S.-Israeli attacks on safeguarded nuclear facilities, while the IAEA has remained silent on the attacks despite international rules protecting such facilities.
Baghaei warned that accountability for military aggression and war crimes must extend beyond those who order or carry out attacks to those whose conduct provides the political, legal or evidentiary foundations used to justify them.
“An institution entrusted with contributing to international peace and security should never become part of the machinery used to manufacture a pretext for war,” he said.