Iran began this Saturday the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the southwest of the country, amid anti-government protests and the repression of the Tehran regime, Iranian state television revealed today.
The new 300-megawatt plant, known as Karoon and located in Iran’s Khuzestan province (near the Iraqi border), will take eight years to complete and cost around $2 billion. Present at the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction was Mohammed Eslami, head of Iran’s Civil Atomic Energy Organization, who first revealed the Karoon’s construction plans in April.
The announcement of the construction of the Karoon plant comes less than two weeks after Iran declared that it had begun producing uranium enriched to 60% purity at the underground Fordo nuclear facility, a move seen as an important addition to the country’s nuclear program.
Enrichment to 60% purity is a small technical step away from weapon purity levels of 90%. Nonproliferation experts have warned in recent months that Iran now has enough 60% enriched uranium to reprocess it into at least one nuclear bomb.
The move was condemned by Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the three Western European nations that remain in the Iran nuclear deal, after the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018. Recent attempts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which eased the sanctions. on Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program, have stalled.
Since September, Iran has been plagued by protests that have marked one of the biggest challenges to its theocracy since the chaotic years that followed its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protests were sparked when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody on September 16, three days after her arrest by Iran’s morality police for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women.
The Iranian government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beatings after her arrest.
In a statement carried by state news agency IRNA today, the country’s national security council announced that around 200 people had been killed during the protests, the first official information on the casualties. Last week, Iranian General Amir Ali Hajizadeh counted the death toll at more than 300.
The conflicting numbers are lower than those recorded by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a US-based organization that has closely followed the protest since its inception.
In its most recent update, the group says 469 people were killed and 18,210 arrested in the protests and the violent crackdown by security forces that followed.
Source: Observadora
