Doomed from the start

Say bad-shogun in the presence of any Iranian and you are likely to provoke a shudder of fear and concern. Translated literally, the phrase means ‘ill-omened'. But, as one of the oldest curses in the Persian lexicon, bad-shogun has wider and deeper connotations. Thus, when it is used to describe the nuclear power station in Bushehr, southern Iran, the curse tells Iranians much more than the travails and tribulations of a tarnished project.

The Bushehr plant did not need new developments to be described as bad-shogun. It was cursed from the start, that is to say some time in 1973, when the Shah, then wondering what to do with a blizzard of gold gleaned from rising oil prices, decided to invest in one of the most ambitious nuclear programmes in the world. After just a few months of cursory studies, a site on the Bushehr peninsula was chosen as the location of what was to be the first of 22 nuclear power plants the Shah wanted to build in the space of 15 years.

Soon after a contract had been signed with a West German company to design and build the nuclear plant, a study by Tehran University's geophysical centre showed that the site chosen sat atop one of the most active earthquake zones in the world. In fact, the very spot where the plant was to be built, and where Helliyeh village had been razed to the ground to make room for the new venture, had been devastated by a massive earthquake 28 years earlier. The German designers, Siemens, however, assured Iran that the plant was designed to resist earthquakes measuring up to seven on the Richter scale.

Tehran University geophysicists were not reassured. While they agreed that Helliyeh had not experienced tremors of a higher degree since records started in 1955, no one could be sure that there had not been bigger shocks further back in the past, or that there would be none in the future.

Despite those misgivings, the Teh-ran authorities decided to press on with the project, with plans to inaugurate the plant in October 1979, to coincide with the Shah's 60th birthday. By that time, however, Iran was in the throes of its Islamic revolution, and it seemed more prudent not to start operating a nuclear power plant.

One of the first moves of the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini was to scrap the nuclear project as a ‘Zionist conspiracy'. The ayatollah's economics adviser suggested that the plant's structures be converted into silos for storing grain, while its main outer building would be redesigned as a modern mosque.

War

By 1980, Iran was at war against Iraq under Saddam Hussain, who had launched his own nuclear project with help from the French. Iranian military commanders, among them Mohsen Rezai, then in charge of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, were concerned that Saddam may acquire a nuclear capability and use it to remedy Iraq's demographic disadvantage against Iran. After months of tergiversation, Khomeini gave the green light for the revival of the project. This time, however, the Germans were no longer keen to oblige. Before the new Iranian regime could persuade someone to take over the project, which was 90 per cent complete before the revolution, president Francois Mitterrand of France had arranged for Bushehr to be bombed by his Super Étendard fighter aircraft repainted in Iraqi colours. Repeated bombing raids on Helliyeh turned the built structures into heaps of rubble. In 1988, Iranian experts suggested that the project be abandoned and a new plant built elsewhere.

However, the clerics were determined to show that they were as capable of building the country as the Shah had been. Because none of the Western powers was prepared to rebuild the plant, Iran had to turn to its traditional enemy, Russia.

That the project was bad-shogun was shown once again when Tehran discovered that the Russian company in charge of the project was the one that had built the ill-fated nuclear power station at Chernobyl.

In 1998, it appeared as if Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, regarded as one of the most competent managers of the Islamic Republic, had succeeded in halting the project. The Russians, however, announced that the project was complete and that inauguration could take place before the new millennium. That promise persuaded Mohammad Khatami, the newly elected president, to give the Russians another chance. The millennium came and went and the inauguration did not happen. The Russians fixed a new date: 2002. That, too, passed without any keys being handed to Iran. Since then, the Russians have postponed the inauguration three more times. The latest postponement came on November 16, when Moscow cancelled the ‘test opening' of the power station, which had been promised for March 2010.

In the meantime, Aghazadeh has been kicked out of office because of his decision to side with Mir Hussain Mousavi, in the presidential election dispute with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is now up to his successor, Ali Salehi, to decide what to do about a bad-shogun project that has already cost more than $6 billion (Dh22 billion).

Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.