MOSCOW — Russia agreed Tuesday to build two nuclear power reactors in Iran, with a possibility of six more after that, in a deal that greatly expands nuclear cooperation between the two countries.
The agreement shows that Russia is pressing ahead with its own vision for ensuring that Iran does not build nuclear weapons, by supplying civilian power technology that will operate under international monitoring. The approach won acceptance from the International Atomic Energy Agency and, grudgingly, from the Bush administration over the last decade as Russia completed Iran’s first civilian nuclear plant, at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast.
The United States was initially critical of the Russian policy of providing civilian reactors to Iran but later withdrew its objections. Russia agreed to complete the reactor, which was begun as a German project before the Iranian revolution of 1979, on the condition that all the nuclear fuel used at the plant over its lifetime be supplied and reprocessed by Russian companies.
By demanding that Iran buy Russian reactor fuel, the authorities in Moscow deprived Iran of part of its justification for developing the ability to enrich uranium at home. But the deal has not halted the Iranian enrichment program. Iranian officials say they also require enriched uranium for medical purposes.
The United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other nations want the enrichment program to be shut down because the same industrial process, using centrifuges, can be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons. Critics of the Russian policy say any nuclear technology transfer to Iran is dangerous.
The director of the Russian state nuclear power company, Sergey Kiriyenko, signed the agreement for the additional reactors in Moscow on Monday with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, at a televised ceremony at the headquarters of the company, known as Rosatom.
The two new reactors will be of the pressurized water type and will be built next to the Bushehr plant, Rosatom said in a statement. Construction and fuel handling will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as it was for the existing plant, the company said.
Broadly, Russia has pressed ahead with exports of nuclear reactors to developing countries despite concern about nuclear safety after the Fukushima disaster in Japan .