Iran will no longer allow IAEA access to nuclear facilities, senior lawmaker says

Iran has received intelligence suggesting that small drones entered its territory from neighboring countries during recent tensions, the country’s ambassador to Armenia said Saturday.

“We have received reports that some drones came into Iran from the direction of certain neighboring states,” Ambassador Mehdi Sobhani told reporters in Yerevan, in comments carried by Iranian media.

He said President Masoud Pezeshkian had asked his Azerbaijani counterpart in a recent phone call to conduct a “serious investigation” into the matter. Sobhani added that Iran is awaiting the outcome of that probe before deciding how to respond.

A senior Iranian lawmaker said Tehran accepted a halt to the war with Israel while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was “collapsing under Iran’s heavy strikes."

“It might have been better not to have agreed to stop the war so soon,” said Fada-Hossein Maleki, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, in an interview with Didban Iran. “When we accepted, Netanyahu’s government was under pressure.”

Maleki called the current arrangement a “pause in fighting,” not a lasting ceasefire, and warned it could break down. “This stop is itself part of the war process,” he said.

The US did not use bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facility in Isfahan during last week’s military strikes because the site’s depth made the weapons ineffective, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told US lawmakers in a classified briefing, CNN reported Friday.

According to multiple sources familiar with the briefing, Caine said the Isfahan site, believed to house a significant portion of Iran’s enriched uranium, was targeted instead with Tomahawk missiles launched from a submarine. The facility’s deeply buried tunnels were not fully destroyed.

By contrast, US B-2 bombers dropped bunker-buster bombs on other nuclear facilities, including Fordow and Natanz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Saturday that the country had paid a high cost in lives during its recent conflict with Israel and the United States, but had not yielded ground or dignity.

Speaking on the day of a state funeral in Tehran for those killed in the 12-day war, Araghchi said Iran’s losses would be remembered as a symbol of national resistance.

“Iranians gave blood, not ground; lost their children, but not their honor,” he said in a post on his official Instagram account. “They stood under thousands of tons of bombs, and did not surrender.”

Araghchi said physical infrastructure could be rebuilt over time, but “the pride of a nation is more valuable than anything.” He described the war as a moment that would “shine like a jewel” in Iran’s long history, and said the country had emerged “stronger and more dignified.”

A senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards warned on Saturday that any harm to Shia religious authorities would provoke a severe response against US personnel in the region.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the IRGC’s coordinating deputy commander, was quoted by state-affiliated Mehr News Agency as saying that “any American military, diplomatic, or administrative personnel in the region could be targeted if an attack on a cleric were attempted".