In the crossfire is a nuclear power plant on its front line, and targeting it would have unforeseeable consequences for its entire region.
This is the power plant near the Iranian port of Bushehr, where a Russian-made 1,000 MW reactor is operating and two others are being built, also with Russian know-how and supervision.
An explosion at the nuclear plant, from a targeted attack or a stray, would threaten the major Gulf urban centers (Abu Dhabi, Manama, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait City) closer to Bushehr than Tehran more. The nightmare scenario has many parallels with that of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant on the front line between Russians and Ukrainians.
Iranian media reported that the Israeli air force hit the wider area of Bushehr yesterday, while the general director of the Russian construction company Rosatom, Alexei Likachev, warned that targeting the nuclear plant, which is about 12 kilometers from the port, would be tantamount to suicide.
About 700 Russian technicians remain at the facility hoping for further intervention from President Putin, who had received guarantees of their safety during the Twelve Day War last June. About 2,000 Iranian scientists and technical personnel also work at the facility.
Construction of the plant—the first in the Middle East to exploit nuclear energy for peaceful purposes—began in 1975 by German companies as part of a grandiose program by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that began in 1967 with the procurement of a small American 5MW reactor for the Tehran Nuclear Research Center.
The construction of the Bushehr factory was stopped after the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah in 1979. The port and the factory under construction were bombed during the war between Iraq and Iran (1980-1988), while the work was resumed in 1995 by Russian companies in the framework of an international agreement, despite the reactions of the USA and Israel.
Boucher’s unit was inaugurated in 2011 and two years later it was connected to the country’s electricity grid covering 2% of its energy needs. The nuclear fuel is of Russian origin and the spent rods must be returned to Russia, under the agreement approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The same agreement provides for the construction of a nuclear plant in southern Iran.
