US blocks Iran nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami from IAEA conference

Iran's nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, was barred from this week's International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference in Vienna after the United States opposed a waiver from United Nations travel sanctions. Austria withdrew the visa it had first issued. Iranian state television said Eslami left Tehran on a regular flight on 12 September, was stopped on the way, and flew home.

The conference of IAEA member states opened on Monday and runs to 18 September. Eslami, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and holds a vice-presidential rank, had been due to speak. He addressed the same gathering in 2025. A lower-level Iranian official may still take the floor later in the week.

How the waiver died

Travel bans on named Iranians were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal and restored last year through the snapback process at the Security Council. Austria, as host state, asked the sanctions committee for an exemption so Eslami could enter. Ambassador Christian Ebner told the conference the request was rejected. The Austrian foreign ministry said entry could not be allowed given Austria's international obligations.

Preston Wells Griffith, the US ambassador to the IAEA, said the denial followed urgent calls from the Trump administration. He said an official on the UN list should not travel until Tehran offered what he called meaningful cooperation on nuclear issues. Iran's ambassador to the IAEA told the opening session that the cancellation was a political act and a formal politicisation of the agency.

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei, speaking in Tehran, called the visa refusal unjustified and said the United States had pressed Austria. Tehran summoned Austria's charge d'affaires. Iran and Russia said the episode is part of a wider effort to keep Iranian officials off international flights.

What the agency can and cannot see

The IAEA has said in recent months that it has been blind to large parts of Iran's programme for more than a year. That sentence is the agency's own. Eslami's absence does not change inspection access. It does change who sits in the hall when member states argue about that blindness.

The United States and Israel treat the programme as a weapons threat. Iran says it is not building a bomb and remains an IAEA member. Those positions were already on the record before Monday. The new fact is procedural: a host-state visa was pulled after a sanctions-committee rejection driven by a US objection.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the organisation's spokesman, and Reza Najafi, Iran's ambassador to the agency, were photographed arriving for the opening. They are not Eslami. The speech written for the head of the programme will be delivered, if at all, by someone who does not run it.

The conference lasts four more days. If a deputy speaks, the text will show how far Tehran wants to use the floor to protest the visa rather than to answer the agency's access file. That choice is the only new lever left in Vienna this week.