TEHRAN — Iranian lawmakers have submitted a bill with triple urgency to Parliament’s Presiding Board seeking the country’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in a decisive response to the IAEA’s politicization and the West’s bad-faith campaign against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
Addressing an open parliamentary session on Sunday, lawmaker Hussein-Ali Haji Deligani said the bill has already been submitted to the Presiding Board. He added that the plan is ready to be presented before an open session and requires approval from Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bagher Ghalibaf to be put to debate.
“Given the circumstances facing the country and the aggression that the enemy has
 launched against us on two occasions, remaining in the NPT brings us nothing but losses,” Haji Deligani emphasized.
The lawmaker pointed to the recent referral of Iran’s case by the IAEA’s Board of Governors to the UN Security Council, and stressed the need for Tehran to avoid incurring further costs. 
“It seems that we may need to withdraw from the NPT so that we can manage our own affairs ourselves,” he insisted.
The move came after the U.S. and allied European countries forced through a resolution by the 35-member Board of Governors to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council over alleged non-compliance with the IAEA’s inspection regime. The resolution passed on September 8 with 23 votes in favor, three against — Russia, China and Niger — and eight abstentions, according to IAEA records.
Iran has condemned the resolution as “fundamentally irrelevant.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismaeil Baghaei said Iran has committed no violations, and that the so-called non-compliance is a direct consequence of the U.S.-Israeli military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. 
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Major General Mohsen Rezaei said on Saturday that the country remains committed to its policy of non-weaponization of its nuclear program, citing martyred Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s religious decree. 
However, he warned that withdrawal from the NPT is a legitimate option in response to military and political threats from the United States and the Israeli regime. 
“We don’t know what will happen in the future,” Rezaei told Al Jazeera in an interview published Saturday, adding that the recent military aggression and subsequent economic and political pressure campaign “allow Iran to withdraw from the NPT.”
Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Chairman Ebrahim Azizi confirmed in an interview with Mehr News Agency that draft plans for NPT withdrawal have been prepared and signed by a large number of lawmakers, and are under review both in the committee and in the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Department. 
“If one day the pillars of the Islamic system conclude that NPT membership is no longer beneficial and only brings losses for the Iranian nation, then based on the principle of defending national security and interests, the Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly take the appropriate decisions,” Azizi said.
Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that the IAEA has been transformed into a political club, abandoning its technical and specialized mandate. 
Azizi told Mehr that the agency “no longer plays the role of a technical and professional organization” and has instead become “a tool in the hands of hegemonic powers like the United States.”
He listed a series of grievances: the IAEA remained silent when U.S. and Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan; it failed to condemn the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, and it issued not even a simple condemnation when Washington violated all international norms.
“According to the NPT’s written statute, the agency’s duty is to support countries committed to peaceful activities and even transfer nuclear technology to them — not to act as a political agent,” Azizi said. 
“When an organization cannot protect the interests of its members, there is no place for the Islamic Republic of Iran to remain in it.”
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Muhammad Eslami had been invited to a formal meeting in Vienna, but under U.S. pressure Austria revoked an already-issued visa, preventing the trip. 
“When we face restrictions for participating in an official meeting, what benefit does our presence there have?” Azizi asked.
Iran’s envoy to the United Nations in Vienna, Reza Najafi, said after the resolution’s passage: “This resolution is a political tool.” He said Iran’s cooperation would be “limited to the extent that circumstances and security allow.”
Following the 12-day war and U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, lawmakers passed the “Law Requiring the Government to Suspend Cooperation with the IAEA.” They also approved legislation to “intensify penalties for espionage and cooperation with the Zionist regime and hostile countries against national security and national interests,” and a bill to “organize micro-drones.”
With U.S.-Israeli military pressure persisting, economic sanctions tightening and a naval blockade in place, the call for NPT withdrawal has evolved from isolated warnings by security officials into a systematic parliamentary push. 
Parliament Presiding Board spokesman Abbas Goodarzi has said that exiting the NPT and revising Iran’s nuclear doctrine are “completely achievable and easily attainable steps.”
Azizi emphasized that Iran’s nuclear industry is a “power-generating industry” and remains peaceful. 
“But if the agency continues this one-sided behavior and fails to fulfill its duties, then naturally it should expect serious and regret-inducing responses from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iranian nation and the officials of the Islamic Republic,” he warned.