Security Council warned of ‘lost continuity of knowledge’ on Iran nuclear programme

The United Nations’ top peace affairs official delivered a stark warning to the Security Council on Friday: since the United States and Israel launched coordinated military strikes on Iran in late February, the international community has lost critical continuity in its understanding of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, told an emergency session that inspectors and intelligence channels have been severely disrupted. The gaps in knowledge, she said, are not minor. They’re dangerous.

What DiCarlo told the Council

DiCarlo’s remarks came as fresh strikes were reported across the Middle East, deepening an already volatile regional picture. She told the 15-member body that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to maintain consistent access to Iranian nuclear sites since the campaign began, and that a “lost continuity of knowledge” now exists around key facilities.

“We are in a situation where the baseline we relied upon can no longer be confirmed,” one senior UN official present at Friday’s session said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That’s an enormous problem when you’re talking about nuclear materials.”

DiCarlo did not specify which facilities have been struck or rendered inaccessible, but sources familiar with the briefing said the Fordow and Natanz enrichment complexes were among the sites of concern.

The strikes and their aftermath

The US and Israel launched their first coordinated wave of attacks on February 27th, targeting what American officials described as active enrichment infrastructure and ballistic missile production sites. At least three subsequent rounds of strikes followed through March. Iran has acknowledged damage to several locations but hasn’t provided detailed assessments.

Before the campaign, Iran was estimated to have enriched uranium to 60 percent purity — well above the 3.67 percent limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal but below the 90 percent threshold for weapons-grade material. That stockpile may have grown to roughly 408 kilograms by early this year, according to IAEA figures published in January.

Nobody knows exactly where those materials stand now.

Council divisions deepen

Friday’s session exposed just how fractured the Council remains. Russia and China called the strikes a flagrant violation of international law and demanded an immediate ceasefire. The United States defended the operation as a legitimate act of self-defence, pointing to Iran’s support for proxy attacks across the region over the past 18 months.

Britain and France urged all parties to allow IAEA inspectors back into the country without conditions. So far, Tehran hasn’t responded to those calls publicly.

What comes next

The path forward is genuinely unclear. Diplomatic back-channels have gone quiet. The IAEA’s Director-General is expected to present an emergency report to its Board of Governors next week, and Council members are already wrangling over a draft resolution that won’t satisfy anyone.

DiCarlo’s warning was, at its core, simple: the world no longer knows what Iran has, where it is, or what state it’s in. And that uncertainty, she implied, could prove far more destabilising than any strike already launched.