Russia and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday on the construction of small nuclear power plants in Iran, Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.
The agreement was signed by Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev and Iran’s top nuclear official, Mohammad Eslami, at a meeting in Moscow. Rosatom described it as a “strategic project”.
Just a day earlier, US President Donald Trump had told the UN General Assembly that “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon” and repeated his assertions about how the United States bombed and destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities.
Eslami, who is also Iran’s vice president, told Iranian state media earlier this week that the plan was to construct eight nuclear power plants as Tehran seeks to reach 20 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2040.
Tehran, which suffers from electricity shortages during high-demand months, has only operating nuclear power plant, in the southern city of Bushehr. It was built by Russia and has a capacity of around 1 GW.
Russia has close relations with Iran and condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year that were carried out with the stated aim of preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Iran says it has no such intention.
