European and Gulf nations on Tuesday accused Iran of continuing to breach its nuclear obligations, as the UN atomic agency remains unable to verify that Tehran's programme is peaceful.
In a joint statement before a Security Council meeting, France, Britain, Germany, the US, Greece, Denmark, Latvia, the UAE and Bahrain said Iran remains the only civilian nuclear state enriching uranium to 60 per cent purity.
They said there is no credible justification for maintaining a stockpile of about 440kg at that level.
“This means Iran has more than 10 IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] significant quantities of high-enriched uranium, which is the amount of material from which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear device cannot be excluded,” France's UN ambassador Jerome Bonnafont said on behalf of the group.
He said Iran has "persistently failed" to fulfil its obligations and fully co-operate with the IAEA, which is "unable to confirm that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful".
Mr Bonnafont also criticised Tehran for failing to inform the IAEA about the condition of nuclear sites struck during last year's conflict or the whereabouts of nuclear material stored there, including the enriched uranium.
Although the strikes destroyed or severely damaged Iran's enrichment sites, much of the uranium is believed to have survived.
In a recent report, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said Iran had not provided reports or access to the agency regarding the affected sites and associated nuclear material, as required under its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations.
The IAEA continued inspections at centres that were not hit in the strikes but suspended them in February on safety grounds after renewed military action. Since then, inspectors have only visited Iran's operating nuclear power plant at Bushehr.
During the Security Council meeting, Bahrain's representative said the region was facing a “worrying paradox” as Iran sought to rebuild trust with the international community while continuing actions that fuelled instability.
“Our region has become a theatre of successive hostilities and uncertainty, which endangers civilians and disrupts the economy, as well as stability, and places international trade and energy safety at the mercy of Iranian policies based on confrontation rather than dialogue and co-operation,” the representative said.
The US deputy UN ambassador, Tammy Bruce, told council members that Washington circulated a draft resolution to the IAEA board of governors on Monday calling on Iran to provide “precise information” about its enriched uranium stockpiles and the sites affected by last year's strikes “without delay.”
“We describe that co-operation as urgent and essential,” Ms Bruce added.
Iran's mission to the UN rejected the accusations, saying in a social media post that a “certain number of members” were making repeated, “baseless allegations against Iran's peaceful nuclear programme, parroting the US and Israeli regime's disinformation campaign".
“For more than five decades, Iran has remained a responsible NPT state party and has never sought nuclear weapons,” the mission said.
“The real threat to the non-proliferation regime is the impunity enjoyed by those who attack safeguarded peaceful nuclear facilities while claiming to uphold international law and non-proliferation.”
