As long and daily power outages return to cities across Iran with the onset of summer, former foreign minister of the Iranian regime, Mohammad Javad Zarif, stated that by 2021, Iran had incurred at least one trillion dollars in costs and damages due to investments in nuclear energy.
It is important to note that this figure was stated by a regime official, and the actual amount is likely much higher.
For the past three decades, Iranian regime officials have consistently claimed that their goal in building nuclear power plants is the peaceful use of nuclear energy, including electricity generation. However, according to the Ministry of Energy, nuclear power has so far accounted for only 1.1% of total electricity production in Iran.
Meanwhile, officials from the Ministry of Energy have projected that Iran’s electricity shortage will soon rise from 25,000 megawatts to 30,000 megawatts, leading to longer daily power outages for households and various industries.
Majid Dabirian, a member of the syndicate of power production companies, previously estimated the cost of building a 10,000-megawatt power plant at around 5 billion euros. This means that to achieve an ideal state where power production exceeds consumption, a budget of at least 15 billion euros would be required.
Additionally, considering the urgent need for investment in fossil fuel sources such as gas and diesel to supply new power plants, all of Iran’s energy sector problems could be resolved with an expenditure of at most 50 billion euros.
In conclusion, with the massive one trillion-dollar expenditure and losses in the nuclear sector, as stated by Mohammad Javad Zarif, regime officials could have fully renovated Iran’s energy infrastructure more than 20 times over.
On the other hand, the cost of constructing a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant is roughly equal to that of an 8,000-megawatt hybrid plant (fossil fuel and solar). According to many experts, considering Iran’s possession of some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, shifting toward nuclear energy for electricity production appears illogical.
The state–run media outlet Chandsanieh reported that in 2020 alone, over 17.3 billion cubic meters of gas were burned off via flaring instead of being utilized. Meanwhile, the country with the second-largest natural gas reserves in the world is unable to produce sufficient electricity.
Despite this, the Iranian regime—due to the belligerent policies of its supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the insistence on uranium enrichment, which triggered Western reactions and extensive economic sanctions over suspicions of nuclear weapons development—completely lost the opportunity to modernize the country’s energy infrastructure.
Over the past week, large numbers of citizens along with business owners and industrial workers in Iran—including bakers and those working in Tehran’s steel market—held protest gatherings against recurring power outages, which have at times lasted up to 12 hours a day.
Fatemeh Mohajerani, the government spokesperson, announced on Wednesday, May 7, that due to worsening power shortages, the working hours of government offices would change. She wrote on X that starting Saturday, May 10, government offices will operate from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. This decision means employees living on the outskirts of the capital—due to high rent prices—will have to begin their commute around 4 a.m.
Meanwhile, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, managing director of Tavanir Electric company, the main electricity provider, claimed that the electricity of 700 banks in Tehran had been cut off due to their high consumption. Ali Akbari, the regime’s energy minister, also stated on Wednesday that electricity prices would “increase progressively” according to a law passed by the Majlis (parliament), justifying it as a measure to “incentivize high-consumption users to reduce and optimize their electricity use.”
This is despite international statistics showing that electricity consumption in Iran is less than half that of many European and Persian Gulf countries.
