TEHRAN (The Thursday Times) — Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, plans to raise its workforce at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant from 180 to 300 people, its chief executive has said, as Moscow moves to restore work it scaled back after US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
“The headcount is growing at present: 180 people are already on the site; we plan to increase it to 300 in the near future,” Alexei Likhachev said on Friday. He said Rosatom saw no risks at present that could slow its work, although the situation in the region remained tense, and that the company aimed to return to its planned pace and bring its workforce back to the planned level next year.
On Saturday, Likhachev said any new projects to build small or large nuclear power plants in Iran would depend on the country’s military, political, and economic conditions.
Rosatom evacuated hundreds of its employees from Iran on security grounds after the United States and Israel attacked the country. Likhachev said on October 28 that the company aimed to raise the number of Russian staff in Iran to 700.
Iran’s only nuclear power plant
Bushehr, on Iran’s Gulf coast, is the country’s only operating nuclear power station. Its 1,000-megawatt reactor was completed by Russia and began supplying electricity to the grid in 2011, and Rosatom is building two more 1,000-megawatt units at the site.
In September 2025, Iran and Russia signed a memorandum on building small nuclear power plants in Iran, followed by a $25 billion agreement for four new units at Sirik, in Hormozgan province.
The UN nuclear watchdog has had no access to Iran’s key nuclear facilities since Israel, joined by the United States, struck them in June 2025. Its inspectors visited Bushehr in September but no other site. On Friday it urged Tehran to let inspectors back, calling its lack of information about Iran’s nuclear material “a matter of serious proliferation concern”.
In Washington, President Donald Trump has told advisers he may hold off on new strikes on Iran unless Tehran or the Houthis provoke the United States, people familiar with the discussions say.
