Iran get's new Juice

Iran went online with an Atomic plant built by the Russians. In the long run this probably spells trouble for Israel and possibly us. This may be why Obama has been trying to smooth things over lately with the Iranian Gov.

Source: Russian Media:

25 February, 2009, 08:52

On Wednesday, a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Iran is to be switched on. The Bushehr reactor will be tested first before generating power, but it could take up to a year before the plant produces its first energy.

The Russian-built Bushehr atomic power plant that cost some one billion dollars, is part of Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is to provide electricity to its 70 million people, but the West views with it suspicion.

“It’s a big step forward. The Iranian people are grateful for Russia’s assistance. It helped Iran at the time when many refused,” recalls political analyst Hussein Rubuan.

However the U.S., several European countries and Israel have long doubted its peaceful intentions, questioning why the world's fourth largest oil producer would be facing energy shortages. They suspect Tehran is seeking to develop its own nuclear weapon.

The IAEA has recently fueled these fears. The UN's nuclear watchdog reported Iran has now enriched enough Uranium to make a bomb.

Russia has always stressed it opposes nuclear weapons proliferation, and emphasised the Bushehr plant has nothing to do with atomic bombs.

“Russia is supplying fuel for the station and it will be also collecting the nuclear waste. This very fuel could be used for the extraction of plutonium which is required for making nuclear weapons. But this process will be monitored by the IAEA which brings Iran's chances of using waste from this station for the production of a nuclear weapon close to nil,” explains Vladimir Sazhin from Institute of East studies.

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Few countries in the world openly do business with Iran, but Russia does and that is something that has never gone down well in the West.

“By the 1990s Russia’s atomic industry was almost non-existent. The Iranian proposal was a lifeline. But no one wanted to see neither Russia’s development nor its success at international levels,” remembers Sazhin.

Analysts say the long awaited start-up of the Bushehr plant is a political and commercial victory for both Moscow and Tehran.

”When China, Indonesia and Vietnam saw that Russia is a reliable partner, they started making cooperation agreements with Moscow in the area of peaceful use of nuclear power. The U.S. was looking for the forced closure of a nuclear program in one country, in Iran, which could allow them, in the future, to reconsider the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The amendments they are pushing for are very disadvantageous for both Russia and Iran,” concludes Aleksey Fenenko from the World Energy Security Issues Institute, Moscow.

Moscow and Tehran signed a deal on the construction of the Bushehr plant back in 1995, but Iran’s nuclear development started long before.

“In the 1970s the Shah invited some Western companies to build a nuclear plant in Iran. He said the atomic industry can enrich the country and other oil-based monarchies of the Persian Gulf. But the 1979 Islamic revolution and then the Iran-Iraq war haltered the project,” says Aleksey Fenenko.

The atomic idea first floated in the seventies has finally become a reality 30 years later.