Iran Scraps September 2025 ‘Cairo’ Nuclear Monitoring Deal After IAEA Censure

Iran’s walk-out echoes Pyongyang’s 2003 exit from the Agreed Framework after Congress froze heavy-oil deliveries—both cases show how political pressure can unravel painstaking nuclear oversight faster than it is built. Structurally, the episode highlights three intersecting trends: (1) the crumbling of post-Cold-War arms-control regimes as middle powers test the limits of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; (2) the growing leverage of extra-institutional force—Israeli and US strikes in June—that the IAEA has no mandate to police; and (3) an accelerating tilt of sanctioned states toward Moscow–Beijing security umbrellas, evidenced by Russia’s open backing of Tehran against the EU. On a 100-year horizon, the real significance is less about this single monitoring deal than about the erosion of the IAEA’s perceived neutrality; if major powers can alternately bomb facilities and demand inspections, the entire safeguards model—rooted in the 1957 Eisenhower-era “Atoms for Peace” ideal—may lose authority. That could push the Middle East toward the 1960s-style opaque deterrence that produced Israel’s undeclared arsenal and later South Africa’s short-lived program, making future proliferation harder, not easier, to reverse.