Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages”, the first official acknowledgment of the extent of the damages caused by US strikes on three nuclear sites.
The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran was still “surveilling the damages and losses”, Araghchi said in an interview with Iran’s state television. But, he added, “I have to say, the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”
That assessment painted a much grimmer picture than that laid out earlier on Thursday by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first public statement since the US attack.
In a pre-recorded video, Khamenei said that the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities “were unable to do anything important”, adding that President Donald Trump’s claims that the strikes “obliterated” the nuclear sites were “exaggerated”.
Araghchi also suggested Iran might stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, and threw into question whether inspectors from the agency would be allowed to access the country’s nuclear sites. He said Iran would not welcome a visit by the agency’s director, Rafael Grossi, at this time.
On Thursday, Iran’s Guardian Council, which has veto power over legislation in the country, approved a bill passed by hardliners in parliament that would effectively ban all cooperation with the IAEA in retaliation for the bombing by the US.
While President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, must still decide whether to enact the law, Araghchi, his foreign minister, said the government would fully cooperate with the law. “Without a doubt, we are obliged to enforce this law,” Araghchi said in the hour-long televised interview. From now on, he added, Iran’s “relationship with the agency will take a different shape”.
Days after the strikes, several key questions about Iran’s nuclear programme remain: What happened to the country’s 400 kg, or about 880 pounds, of enriched uranium, which would provide enough nuclear fuel for 10 bombs should Iran decide to weaponise it? Also unanswered: Whether any of Iran’s advanced centrifuges survived the strikes.
These are questions that UN inspectors could more definitively answer if they were allowed into the sites. They would also be able to confirm whether Iran was repairing its facilities and reviving its nuclear programme.
Analysts say that Iran has little leverage left in any talks with the West, given the setbacks wrought by the US strikes and the days of Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure and assassination of several top nuclear scientists. So Tehran may be trying to use cooperation with the IAEA as a negotiating card. It also serves Iran, experts say, to keep everyone guessing on its nuclear capabilities.
“Iran wants to keep everything in the dark, to make sure they can play the diplomatic game of poker about the extent of the damages to the sites and the fate of the pile of enriched uranium,” said Sina Azodi, an expert on Iran’s nuclear programme at George Washington University. “Nobody knows exactly what is going on, there are many conflicting reports, and Iran is using the confusion to its benefit.”
New York Times News Service