Iran Repeats an Old NPT Threat After Oil’s $13 Jump

Mohammadreza Mohseni-Sani, a member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on September 12 that Tehran no longer regards the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as binding. He told the Tehran outlet Didban Iran that the pact no longer applied “whether by remaining in it or leaving it.”

Brent had already climbed from $96.02 on September 1 to $109.51 on September 9, after U.S. strikes resumed on September 2. Gold was still falling. Bitcoin closed at $77,231. No withdrawal notice has been filed in Washington, London, or Moscow.

The IAEA Board Reported Iran Two Days Earlier

The Saturday interview followed a harder step in Vienna. On September 9, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States told the IAEA Board of Governors that inspectors had no access to declared nuclear facilities since June, and that the agency had received no information at all on the status of those plants or the material inside them.

Twenty-three countries on the 35-member board voted to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council. China, Russia, and Niger voted no. Eight members abstained, and one did not vote because it was in arrears. Diplomats described the referral as the first of its kind in 20 years.

The Agency’s lack of access to verify this material is a matter of proliferation concern and of compliance with Iran’s NPT Safeguards Agreement, and needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency.

Rafael Grossi, IAEA Director General, quoted in the Quad statement to the Board, Vienna, September 9, 2026

The same statement said the watchdog had lost all visibility over Iran’s high-enriched uranium for more than a year, and that Iran had still not given the precise location of a fourth declared enrichment plant in Isfahan. An internal agency report circulating in early September put the last verified stock at 440.9 kilograms enriched up to 60 percent and 184.1 kilograms up to 20 percent. Those figures are a snapshot from before access stopped, not a live inventory.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, answered the Board on September 10. He called the resolution illegal and political, and said the agency’s conduct would push countries toward leaving the NPT.

The anti-Iran resolution adopted by the Board of Governors is illegal, technically unfounded,entirely political,and unacceptable,bearing the clear imprint of U.S. and Zionist pressure.The IAEA’s politicized & disruptive actions will push countries toward withdrawing from the NPT.

— محسن رضایی (@ir_rezaee) September 10, 2026

Tehran Has Threatened This Exit Since 2018

Iran signed the treaty in 1968 and became a party when it entered into force on March 5, 1970. It concluded a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1974. It has never completed a withdrawal. The language on Saturday is a later verse of a song Tehran has sung through several crises.

In 2018, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council listed withdrawal as an option if Washington tore up the 2015 nuclear deal. A year after the United States left that deal, then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said authorities were considering an NPT exit. He repeated the threat in 2020 if European states took Iran to the U.N. over safeguards.

THE NPT EXIT THREATS, 2025-2026

1. January 11, 2025: The government threatens to leave the NPT if U.N. sanctions lifted under the 2015 deal are put back through snapback.
2. June 16, 2025: After Israeli strikes on nuclear sites, the foreign ministry says the Majlis is preparing a withdrawal bill.
3. September 29, 2025: Committee spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei says about 15 draft exit plans have been filed. President Masoud Pezeshkian says Iran will not leave the treaty.
4. March 29, 2026: Tehran MP Malek Shariati submits a triple-urgency bill to quit the NPT, scrap the 2015 implementing law, and shift civilian nuclear work toward SCO and BRICS partners.
5. September 9-10, 2026: The IAEA Board reports Iran to the Security Council. Mohsen Rezaei warns that the agency’s move will push states out of the NPT.
6. September 12, 2026: Mohseni-Sani says the treaty is no longer binding. Hossein-Ali Haji-Deligani, the MP for Shahin Shahr, says a triple-urgency exit bill is ready and that Iran should carry out the tests needed for a nuclear weapon as soon as possible.

Ebrahim Rezaei, speaking when the March bill was filed, put the grievance in one line that the committee has not retired.

Continued membership in the NPT is meaningless. The NPT has brought us no benefit. It has neither protected our country from attacks by nuclear powers nor prevented repeated strikes on our nuclear facilities.

Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman, National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, March 2026

Mohseni-Sani, on the same day he dismissed the treaty, also said the Majlis is under pressure, that expert debate is still required, and that the Islamic Republic will decide when the time comes. That pairing, a hard public line and a delayed state decision, is the pattern.

Brent Added $13.49 on the Strikes, Not the Speech

U.S. Energy Information Administration daily spots, compiled by GuruFocus, put Brent crude oil at $109.51 a barrel on September 9, up $13.49 from $96.02 on September 1. The tape moved with the shooting, not with a committee interview that did not yet exist.

BRENT CRUDE, EIA DAILY SPOT

Strikes resumed on September 2, the first up-day on that list. U.S. Central Command said it destroyed five Iranian oil carriers on September 8 after IRGC attacks on a U.S. Navy warship, and that it had destroyed three more three days earlier. Ship-tracking firms have described Hormuz volumes falling from about 8 million to 9 million barrels a day before the latest round of fighting to below 2 million after it, against a waterway that in peacetime carries about a fifth of the world’s oil.

The September 9 print was 61.12% above the $67.97 EIA reading from a year earlier. The same day’s Short-Term Energy Outlook still had Brent near $90 through the rest of 2026 and $74 in 2027, on the assumption that Gulf output recovers. Spot oil is pricing a chokepoint. The official forecast is pricing a reopening. The NPT remark did not create either number.

Gold Slid From $4,683.72 as Missiles Flew

A shooting war in the Gulf is the textbook bid for bullion. The tape did the opposite. Gold traded at $4,318.89 an ounce on September 11, down $364.83 from $4,683.72 on August 25, while Brent was making new highs for the month.

THE SPLIT ON SEPTEMBER 12

• Brent: $109.51 on September 9, up $13.49 from September 1.
• Gold: $4,318.89 on September 11, down from $4,683.72 on August 25.
• Bitcoin: $77,231 close on September 12, off a $79,852 intraday high on September 11.
• VIX: 18, a calm reading for a week of tanker strikes and a nuclear-treaty headline.

Higher oil feeds inflation bets and pulls rate-cut odds the other way. That is a headwind for a metal that pays no yield, and it has been the stronger force in this round than the usual safe-haven bid. Bitcoin traded like a risk asset on the same tape, slipping $2,621 from the prior day’s high even as crude held above $100. A VIX at 18 is the financial market’s way of saying it still sees a contained tanker war, not a nuclear breakout.

What a Formal NPT Notice Would Change

A committee member cannot take Iran out of the treaty. Article X can, if the state uses it. The clause gives every party the right to withdraw if it decides that extraordinary events related to the treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It also sets the only paperwork that moves the legal fact.

WHAT ARTICLE X REQUIRES

• The notice: The withdrawing state must give three months’ notice under Article X to all other parties and to the U.N. Security Council, with a statement of the extraordinary events it cites.
• The inspectors: Iran’s 1974 safeguards agreement stays in force as long as Iran is a party. When a withdrawal takes effect, that legal basis for inspections lapses with it.
• The precedent: Only North Korea has completed this step. It notified in 1993 and pulled the notice a day before it would have taken effect, then notified again in 2003, later running six nuclear tests and building an estimated 50 weapons.

Inspectors are already locked out of the plants that matter, so a large part of what a formal exit would do is already true on the ground. The difference is the legal shell. As long as Iran remains a party, the Board can still report non-compliance, the Security Council still has a treaty hook, and any future access still has a contract to restart. A completed Article X notice would end that hook three months after it landed.

Hardliners answering Rezaei’s post made a simpler case: the country has already been bombed, so remaining in a treaty that did not stop the bombs buys nothing extra. The state has heard that case since at least 2018 and has not walked it into a depositary.

The March Bill Never Reached the Depositaries

Shariati’s March 29 bill had three parts: declare an NPT exit, revoke the 2015 law that put the nuclear deal into Iranian statute, and bless civilian nuclear work with SCO and BRICS partners. It was marked triple-urgency so it could skip the slow track. It was not a notice to the United States, the United Kingdom, or Russia, the three depositary governments named in the treaty.

The Foreign Ministry has not published a matching statement to Mohseni-Sani’s interview. Pezeshkian’s line from September 2025, that Iran will not leave the NPT, has not been replaced by an executive filing. Parliament can draft. The depositaries can only open a notice that the government sends.

Haji-Deligani’s same-day call for nuclear-weapon tests goes further than the committee’s usual grievance about inspections and strikes. It is still a lawmaker’s sentence, not a Supreme National Security Council decision and not a notice. Enrichment “to any level,” a phrase attached to Mohseni-Sani in circulation on September 12, would be a policy shift if the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran adopted it. It has not announced one.

June 2025 strikes hit Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. Later rounds hit Natanz again and put projectiles near Bushehr. Those attacks are the “extraordinary events” an Article X letter would cite. They are also, so far, events Iran has answered with bills, interviews, and a dark inspection file, not with a three-month notice.

Bitcoin Closed at $77,231 Anyway

If a single Majlis interview were enough to reprice a nuclear breakout, gold would not have lost $364.83 during the same stretch of strikes, and the VIX would not be sitting at 18. Oil did the work that a chokepoint always does. The treaty headline rode along.

A filing in Washington, London, or Moscow would be a different fact. It would start a 90-day clock, take the legal floor out from under the IAEA, and give gold and bitcoin a date to trade against. Until that copy exists, Iran is still a party, the 1974 safeguards agreement is still the contract on paper, and the Saturday remark sits in a file that already holds 2018, 2020, 2025, and March 2026.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and market analysis for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell crude oil, gold, bitcoin, or any related security or derivative, and it is not legal advice on treaty law or sanctions. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser and, where legal rights or obligations are at issue, a qualified attorney before making any decision. Prices, votes, stockpile figures, and diplomatic statuses are those given by the named official series and statements on the dates cited and can change with the next session, the next Board meeting, or a formal notice.