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Iran de­cid­ed at the last minute Thurs­day to with­draw a res­o­lu­tion pro­hibit­ing at­tacks on nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties that it had put for­ward along with Chi­na, Rus­sia and oth­er coun­tries for a vote be­fore an an­nu­al gath­er­ing of the U.N. nu­clear watch­dog’s mem­ber na­tions.

West­ern diplo­mats, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss in­ter­nal de­lib­er­a­tions, said the U.S. has been heav­i­ly lob­by­ing be­hind the scenes to pre­vent the res­o­lu­tion from be­ing adopt­ed. The U.S. has raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­duc­ing fund­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency if the res­o­lu­tion was adopt­ed and if the body moved to cur­tail Is­rael’s rights with­in the agency, the diplo­mats said.

In 1981, the pro­vi­sion of as­sis­tance to Is­rael un­der the IAEA’s tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance pro­gram was sus­pend­ed as a re­sult of an Is­raeli strike on a nu­clear re­ac­tor in Iraq. At the time, the at­tack was strong­ly con­demned in res­o­lu­tions by the U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the IAEA Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence and the IAEA Board of Gov­er­nors.