Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages,” the first official acknowledgment of the extent of the damage caused by U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites.

The Atomic Energy Organization 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 Thursday by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first public statement since the U.S. attack.

In a prerecorded video, Khamenei said 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 United Nations’ 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.

U.N. official weighs in

Grossi, the U.N. watchdog head, said on French radio Thursday that centrifuges at the Fordo uranium enrichment plant in Iran are “no longer operational” after the American bunker-busting bombs hit.

Inspectors from the IAEA have been unable to gain access to the nuclear sites since the strikes. Grossi told Radio France Internationale in an interview that while evaluating the damage from the strikes using satellite images alone was difficult, given the power of the bombs dropped on Fordo and the technical characteristics of the plant, “we already know that these centrifuges are no longer operational.”

The centrifuges — giant machines that spin at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium — require a high-degree of precision and are vulnerable to intense vibrations, he said. “There was no escaping significant physical damage,” Grossi said. “So we can come to a fairly accurate technical conclusion.”

He said, however, that it would be “too much” to assert that Iran’s nuclear program had been “wiped out” after the Israeli and American bombing campaign. Grossi noted that not all of Iran’s nuclear sites had been struck and said Iranian officials had told him that they would take “protective measures” for the uranium they had already enriched.

Still, he said, the nuclear program has definitely suffered “enormous damage.”

He declined to say how far Iran’s nuclear program had been set back.

“It’s true that with these reduced capacities,” Grossi said, “it will be much more difficult for Iran to continue at the same pace as before.”

Iran rejects oversight

One of the main purposes of the U.N. watchdog is to monitor nuclear activity in Iran and other countries, including those who have signed on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the agency’s relations with Iran were at a low point even before Israel attacked the country June 13.

U.N. inspectors remained in Iran throughout the war but were not able to gain access to the nuclear sites amid the fighting. And it was not clear when or even if they would be allowed to do so again now that a ceasefire has taken hold.

On Thursday, Iran’s Guardian Council, which has veto power over legislation in the country, approved a bill passed by hard-liners in parliament that would effectively ban all cooperation with the IAEA in retaliation for the bombing by the United States of the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities over the weekend.

While President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, must still decide whether to enact the law, Araghchi said the government would fully cooperate with the law. “Without a doubt, we are obliged to enforce this law,” Araghchi said in the hourlong televised interview. From now on, he added, Iran’s “relationship with the agency will take a different shape.”

Analysts say that Iran has little leverage left in any nuclear negotiations with the West, and may be trying to use cooperation with the IAEA as a negotiating card.

Talks with U.S.

Trump and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East who was leading talks with Iran, have said that Tehran and Washington would soon return to the negotiating table. But Araghchi said Thursday that no such plans had been confirmed.

“Whether or not we return to diplomacy with the United States is now under consideration and will depend on our national interests,” Araghchi said, adding that no agreement had yet been reached with the United States to resume them.

“Going through a war changes many realities,” Araghchi said. “The situation before and after the war is very different, and diplomacy must adjust itself to this new reality.”