The foreign ministries of the four Western nations issued a joint statement welcoming the IAEA's resolution "responding to Iran's insufficient cooperation with the IAEA on serious and outstanding safeguards issues", surrounding its nuclear activities.

"The overwhelming majority vote at the IAEA Board of Governors today sends an unambiguous message to Iran that it must meet its safeguards obligations and provide technically credible clarifications on outstanding safeguards issues," the statement added.

"We urge Iran to heed the call of the international community to fulfil its legal obligations, and cooperate with the IAEA to fully clarify and resolve issues without further delay."

In a separate statement, regional rival Saudi Arabia also said it welcomed the IAEA decision, "which stresses that Iran must comply with its obligations... and the need for its cooperation with the agency to resolve all outstanding nuclear issues".

Earlier Wednesday the IAEA said it had adopted a resolution formally criticising Iran for a lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear inspectorate, diplomatic sources told AFP.

The motion brought by the United States, Britain, France and Germany - but voted against by Russia and China -- is the first to criticise Iran since June 2020 and comes amid an impasse on efforts to bring the US back into a 2015 deal over Iran's nuclear programme.