Mohammad Eslami inaugurated the construction operation of “Karun” nuclear power plant in Darkhovein District in the Shadegan County of southwestern province of Khuzestan on Saturday, saying, “The government is moving towards the production of low-cost energy and fuel; therefore the development of nuclear power plants is on the agenda of this organization.”

According to reports, the power plant is of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) type and with the capacity of producing 300 megawatts of electricity is to be built on a land of approximately 50 hectares in the vicinity of the Karun River.

During the inauguration ceremony, Eslami said the high-speed movement towards the development of nuclear power plants has begun across the country, adding that, “The start of the construction operation of the Karun nuclear power plant has taken place in this regard to scale up the share of nuclear energy in the country’s electricity basket to about 20 percent,” which is considered a “big step in the 20-year horizon” of the AEOI.

Stressing that the 300-megawatt power plant is important for the southwest of the country, especially the Khuzestan Province, Iran’s nuclear chief said, “We hope to build the power plant as a first step of building small power plants in order to create a new chapter in the country’s industrial and technological capacity, and also to expand this technology at a general level as well.”

Eslami said the construction of Karun power plant is in line with the AEOI’s mission to produce nuclear electricity through building indigenous nuclear power plants, adding that the approximate time for the completion of the project is eight years, which is carried out by using the maximum domestic capabilities in the fields of design, equipment supply and construction of nuclear power plants.

The financial estimate of the implementation of the project, as Eslami said, is about two billion dollars, and one of the benefits of the project is the supply of electricity to the region and the southwestern province.

In recent years, Iranian scientists have made remarkable progress in the field of peaceful nuclear technology despite the tough sanctions imposed by the West.

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On Monday, Swedish arms watchdog in a report said nuclear arsenals are expected to grow in coming years, reversing a decline seen since the Cold War. The global stockpile of nuclear weapons is expected to rise in coming years for the first time since the Cold War due to global tensions, a leading arms watchdog has said.

In its annual report published on Monday (PDF), the Stockholm International Peace Research (SIPRI) said on Monday that all nine nuclear-armed countries are increasing or upgrading their arsenals.

“There are clear indications that the reductions that have characterised global nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War have ended,” said Hans Kristensen, associate senior fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

Russia with 5,977 warheads and the U.S., with 5,428, together still possess about 90 percent of all nuclear warheads in the world, according to the report. In 2021, the number of nuclear warheads in both countries declined further, but this was mainly due to the dismantling of discarded warheads, which the military had already abandoned years ago.

Their useable military stockpiles remained relatively stable and within the limits set by a nuclear arms reduction treaty, SIPRI said.

There was a slight reduction in the total number of nuclear warheads to an estimated 12,705 worldwide, this number will probably grow again in the course of the coming decade, the report said.

For decades, the number of nuclear weapons worldwide has been decreasing steadily. It is now less than one-fifth of what was in the arsenals of the nuclear powers at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s. Last year, however, SIPRI had already identified a trend reversal towards more modern nuclear weapons.

The five UN veto powers, including China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – all of which are nuclear weapon states – declared at the beginning of the year their intention to take action against the further spread of nuclear weapons.

“We emphasize that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be waged,” the U.S. said in a joint statement at the beginning of January.

But SIPRI noted that all five countries had since further expanded or modernized their arsenals. Russia had even openly threatened the possible use of nuclear weapons in the course of its war of aggression in Ukraine.

“Although there were some significant gains in both nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament in the past year, the risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War,” said SIPRI Director Dan Smith.

Also the remaining other nuclear weapon states – India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan – have all recently developed or deployed new weapon systems or at least announced this, the think-tank said. Israel has never publicly acknowledged having such weapons.

It added that China is in the middle of a “substantial expansion” of its nuclear weapon arsenal, which includes the construction of more than 300 new missile silos. Britain announced last year that it will increase the upper limit for its total stockpile of warheads.

“All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies,” said Wilfred Wan, the director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. “This is a very worrying trend.”

The new SIPRI data refer to January 2022, the month before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is still a little too early to draw conclusions about how Russia’s war will ultimately affect the nuclear situation in the world, SIPRI’s Kristensen said.

The ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, growing hostilities on the China-India border and North Korea’s ongoing nuclear efforts also play a role. All these things add up, so it is fair to say that the world is in a very precarious state at the moment, Kristensen said.

The report reveals this fact that the big powers say something and act differently and they just want other countries to stay away from being a nuclear country but they boost their own nuclear military power in silence.

This happens while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) simply puts its pressure on independent countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran for its peaceful nuclear programs while it remains silent about such a stockpile.

New analyses and reports all bespeak of this fact that most of the countries in the world are moving to boost their nuclear programs or even nuclear powers because they have realized that being a nuclear power to some extent will make them apparently safe against possible foreign aggression.

The United Nations mostly expresses its concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program but it remains passive and silent when big countries continue their race for boosting their nuclear weapon stockpile and this passive approach makes this global body a toothless tool for stopping big powers from increasing their nuclear warheads and race for increasing their stockpiles.

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Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg dismissed Macron’s call for a European “strategic dialog” about the role of France’s nuclear protection and said a “tried and tested” deterrent was already in place.

Hailing France as a “highly valued ally” whose nuclear capabilities contributed to NATO’s overall security, Stoltenberg said, however, that Europe was already protected by what he called nuclear deterrence by the atomic weapons of member states Britain and the US.

“We have to remember that we have a European nuclear deterrent today — 28 allies deliver that every day and it’s not only a promise, but it’s something that has been there for decades,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the international conference. “It’s tried and tested, we exercise it, and it’s institutionalized, and it is the ultimate security guarantee for Europe.”

Britain’s departure from the EU last month has made France the bloc’s only nuclear power, but Paris has refused to put its nuclear deterrence capabilities under the auspices of the EU or NATO.

In a major speech in Paris last week, Macron claimed France’s nuclear arsenal now had “a European dimension” after Britain’s exit from the EU.

The French president also reiterated his previous calls for Europe’s defensive autonomy from the US and the reduction of reliance on other world powers.

“The issue is not for Europeans to know whether they must defend themselves with or without Washington,” Macron said during the speech. “But our security derives also, inevitably, from a greater capacity by Europeans to act autonomously.”

Stoltenberg clashed with Macron last year after the French president said NATO was suffering from “brain death,” and described the US-led military alliance as strategically and politically defunct.

US President Donald Trump has been a fierce NATO critic, mostly accusing other military alliance members of not paying their “fair share.”

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In an address to the opening of a course on nuclear rights, held in Tehran on Saturday, Kamalvandi said Iran’s decision to reduce commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was made after a year of “strategic patience” in the wake of the US administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the accord.

He also said that Iran would be ready to resume honoring the nuclear deal in its entirety as soon as the other parties do the same, warning that, otherwise, Tehran will continue to reduce commitments to the JCPOA.

His comments came a few days after Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said Iran will continue to scale back the JCPOA commitments until it gets the desirable results.

In May 2018, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the JCPOA.

Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the JCPOA after the US withdrawal, but the three EU parties to the deal (France, Britain, and Germany) have failed to ensure Iran’s economic interests.

The EU’s inaction forced Tehran to stop honoring certain commitments to the nuclear deal, including a rise in the stockpile of enriched uranium.

Iran maintains that the new measures are not designed to harm the JCPOA but to save the accord by creating a balance in the commitments.

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