Officials at Tehran are threatening diplomatic and military countermeasures to an American-backed resolution at the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog to censure Iran, which could eventually revive painful global sanctions on the Islamic Republic. 

Formally condemning Iran, the 35-member International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, in an unprecedented decision, voted Thursday on the censure resolution, proposed by America, Britain, France, and Germany, declaring the Islamic Republic in non-compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. The resolution passed with a 19-country majority.     

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who is scheduled to meet the American special envoy, Steven Witkoff, in Oman over the weekend, said the censure could complicate negotiations. “Sunday’s negotiations in Oman are taking place under the shadow of the new resolution passed by the IAEA board of governors, which adds to the complexity of the discussions,” Mr. Araghchi said Thursday. 

Earlier, Iran announced that in response to the IAEA resolution it would upgrade its centrifuges at the deeply dug Fordow nuclear plant to machines that can enrich uranium at a faster pace. Iranian officials also said they will open a new enrichment site at an undisclosed location. Tehran likely had known for a while that an IAEA resolution could be imminent. 

“I wonder if the U.S. and Israel have picked up on intelligence that Iran plans to take a step that crosses a red line” in response to the IAEA resolution, the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, writes on X. Such a red line could include enriching uranium to a bomb-level purity of 90 percent, or a decision to expel the IAEA inspectors, he writes. 

Other measures could be an Iranian withdrawal from the NPT, as North Korea did in 2003, or an upgrade to its ballistic missile arsenal. On Wednesday, Iran’s defense minister, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, announced that Iran has successfully tested a new ballistic missile equipped with a two-ton warhead.

Iran having a large amount of missiles “is as big an existential threat as the nuclear threat, and this is an existential threat to the United States, the free world,” and the Gulf states, Mr. Witkoff said Wednesday night at a gathering of Hatzalah, a Jewish charity.   

If Israel or America have received intelligence that Iran has crossed a red line, Mr. Brodsky writes, it could have led to increasing signals at Washington and Jerusalem that the military option to end the nuclear and missile threat is increasingly favorable to diplomacy. Yet, he tells the Sun, the added tensions could be an American attempt to pressure Iran to compromise in the sixth round of the Oman talks.  

Asked if an Israeli attack on Iran is imminent, President Trump said Thursday, “I don’t want to say imminent, but it looks like it’s something that could very well happen.” Yet he also said he is still looking for a diplomatic solution. “It’s simple,” he said, “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

The censure resolution at Vienna, meanwhile, could lead to even more painful diplomatic measures. In a possible next step, the IAEA board could refer Iran’s NPT noncompliance to the United Nations Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions. “This is the prelude to UNSC referral and snapback,” the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz, writes on X.  

The UN council passed in 2015 a resolution that endorsed that year’s President Obama-led nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. One clause of that resolution allowed each of the six JCPOA parties to unilaterally cancel the deal and reimpose all global sanctions that had existed earlier.

In a unique feature, the “snapback” option in the 2015 resolution allowed no vetoes by the five permanent council members. It did limit the use of that option to within 10 years of the resolution’s passage. After October, that option will expire. French, British, and German diplomats have been preparing to employ the “snapback” option for a while, several diplomats tell the Sun. The IAEA resolution could accelerate the process.