Iran is assessing the damage and lashing out over the American and Israeli airstrikes that damaged its nuclear sites. But the Iranian government kept open the possibility Tuesday of resuming talks with Washington over its atomic program. The comments by government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani also included another acknowledgment that key sites within Iran's program that were targeted by the American strikes had been "seriously damaged." Iran's state-run IRNA news agency quoted Mohajerani as making the remarks at a briefing for journalists.

Iran's supreme leader says that negotiations with America "are not intelligent, wise or honorable" after President Donald Trump floated nuclear talks with Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also suggested that "there should be no negotiations with such a government," but stopped short of issuing a direct order not to engage with Washington. Khamenei's remarks to air force officers in Tehran on Friday appeared to contradict his own earlier remarks that opened the door to talks. The 85-year-old Khamenei has always carefully threaded his remarks about negotiating with the West. Following his remarks, the Iranian rial sunk to a record low of 872,000 rials to $1 in aftermarket trading.

Iran is holding a runoff presidential election pitting a hard-line former nuclear negotiator against a reformist lawmaker. Both men earlier struggled to convince a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting took place Friday. State television aired images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country. But online videos purported to show some polling stations empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital Tehran saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.

Iran has interred late President Ebrahim Raisi at the holiest Shiite shrine in the nation, days after a fatal helicopter crash killed him, the country's foreign minister and six others. Raisi was placed Thursday inside a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, where Shiite Islam's eighth imam is buried. Raisi is the first top government official to be buried at the shrine since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He once oversaw the shrine and a charity foundation associated with it, believed to be worth tens of billions of dollars. The death of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others in the crash on Sunday comes at a politically sensitive moment for Iran, both at home and abroad.