Russia is pulling out its technicians and engineers from Bushehr, US and European government representatives said, leaving Iran's first nuclear reactor just short of completion at a time of growing international pressure on Tehran to curb its atomic ambitions.
The representatives -- a European diplomat and a US official -- said yesterday that a large number of Russian technicians, engineers and other specialists were flown back to Moscow within the last week, at about the same time senior Russian and Iranian officials tried, but failed, to resolve differences over the Bushehr nuclear reactor. They spoke on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential.
Although both sides officially say their differences are financial, the dispute has a strong political component that the West hopes could result in Moscow lining up closer behind US-led efforts to slap harsher UN sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.
Russian officials deny links between the dispute over Bushehr and Iran's nuclear defiance. But two senior European officials, speaking separately, said yesterday that Moscow recently dropped all pretexts and bluntly told Iran that Russia would not make good on pledges to deliver nuclear fuel for Bushehr unless it complies with the UN demand for an enrichment freeze.
And asked about the approximately 2,000 Russian workers on site of the nearly completed reactor outside the southern city of Bushehr, the US official said: "A good number of them have left recently."
The European diplomat, who is accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said a large number had departed as late as last week, during abortive talks in Moscow between Russian Security Council head Igor Ivanov and Ali Hosseini Tash, Iran's deputy Security Council chief.
Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Rosatom, Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency, confirmed the number of Russian workers at the Bushehr plant had recently dwindled because of what he said were Iranian payment delays. He would not say how many had left.
The Russian departures are formally linked to a financial row between Moscow and Tehran -- but are also connected to international efforts to persuade Tehran to freeze activities related to uranium enrichment, which can produce both nuclear fuel and the fissile material for nuclear warheads.
The reactor is 95 percent completed, although eight years behind schedule. But Russia announced this month that further work on the US$1 billion project would be delayed because Iran had failed to make monthly payments since January. It said the delay could cause "irreversible" damage to the project.
Iran, which denies falling behind in payments, was furious and was convinced that Russia was now using the claim of financial arrears as a pretext to increase pressure for it to heed the UN Security Council.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS