By Syed Ali Zia Jaffery
14 May 2026
Representatives of the 191 member states of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are meeting in New York (April 27–May 22 under the cloud of the ongoing Iran war. The five yearly review meeting (RevCon), the Treaty’s 11th, is reviewing progress on implementation of its three pillars: disarmament, non-proliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. At the time of writing combat operations in the US-Israel war with Iran are on an extended pause due to a fragile, wobbly ceasefire. The effects of attacks on Iran, an NPT signatory and non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS), by both the US, a nuclear-weapon state (NWS), and Israel, a non-NPT nuclear-armed country, will have a deleterious, indelible effect on this RevCon. In particular, the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities will vitiate the environment during the RevCon.
Attacks on Safeguarded Nuclear Facilities
Months after bombing Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan in June 2025, the US and Israel struck them and other sites again, including strikes near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Israel and the US have flouted international law and attacked nuclear facilities of an NPT (NNWS). This deals a severe blow to the Treaty with the danger Iran could become convinced its NPT membership cannot protect its civilian nuclear infrastructure from aggression by both an NWS, the US and its strategic ally, which is not an NPT State Party.
More troubling is that these nuclear facilities are under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). safeguards, central to the effectiveness of the NPT, requiring the Agency to ascertain compliance of NPT members states with the Treaty.
Iran concluded a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1974 and from 2003 until 2006, voluntarily implemented the Additional Protocol, strengthening inspections. After signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, Iran temporarily applied it until 2021, abandoning it as part of a belated response to Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA with which Iran was fully compliant. Consequently, military strikes on such facilities, especially by non-NPT nuclear-armed states severely undermine the centrality of IAEA safeguards: if a non NPT state targets a signatory’s safeguarded facilities, it puts the role of the IAEA in question, leaving NPT members less incentivized to maintain their safeguards commitments if they do not provide immunity to civilian nuclear facilities.
All of this means that Iran can use this RevCon to forcefully argue that Israel’s military actions against its nuclear sites contravene the final documents of the successful 2000 and 2010 RevCons. The latter, adopted at the 2010 RevCon states, “attacks or threats of attack on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes jeopardize nuclear safety, have dangerous political, economic and environmental implications and raise serious concerns regarding the application of international law on the use of force in such cases, which could warrant appropriate action in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.”
In the ongoing RevCon, Iran has vociferously spoken against these attacks. In his statement during the General Debate, Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Vienna, Reza Najafi, termed the brazen targeting of safeguarded nuclear facilities a violation of the Treaty.
Additionally, Iran submitted a working paper to the RevCon titled “Prohibition of Attacks on Peaceful Nuclear Facilities and Scientists,” recommending not only the strongest condemnation of such attacks but also legal accountability for the violators.
With consensus-building already elusive, the adoption of this language in any outcome document appears to be next to impossible. The US is likely to vehemently repudiate these recommendations. Moreover, while some member states have called such strikes a violation of international law, they have balked at accentuating the inexorable connection between attacks on Iranian facilities and the sanctity of Safeguards.
As a result, the 11th Review Conference of the NPT is unlikely to offer a roadmap to address challenges facing the Treaty. If anything, it will likely end up becoming a bickering platform for both Tehran and Washington, leading to yet another failed RevCon.
About the author
Syed Ali Zia Jaffery is Deputy Director, Center for Security, Strategy and Policy Research (CSSPR), University of Lahore.
Title photograph: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe, UN71137526, UN Photo
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