It does not come as a shock that Dmitriy Medvedev, president of the Russian Federation, promptly rejected a clandestine deal supposedly proffered by the Obama administration to end plans for a European missile shield in exchange for Moscow’s help in ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions and long range missile program. Who can blame him? While much of the missile technology Iran is toying with comes from North Korea, its state of the art nuclear energy program is largely courtesy of the Russian Federation. Atomstroyexport, Russia’s state-owned monopoly dealing with exporting nuclear technology, is pretty much the whole reason Iran has a nuclear program.
They built the first Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr (at a one billion dollar price tag), which is due to come online later this year. Bushehr was originally part of a 20 plant network, though this ambitious plan has fallen by the wayside. Still, there is much talk of building a network of medium-sized reactors across the county, should Bushehr prove to be an effective and efficient supplement to Iran’s energy needs. I wonder who will be first in line to fill that contract?
Above and beyond this, Russia is in the middle of cutting a deal with Iran to supply ten years of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr plant. Has everyone forgotten that the original deal to build the Bushehr plant came with a guarantee that Russia would manufacture the rods and Iran would be required to return the spent fuel to the Federation? With Russia supplying the rods for the reactors, one has to wonder what all those centrifuges in Nataz are for?
