Berlin, Aug 21, IRNA – The official inauguration of the Bushehr reactor signals Iran’s “great victory” over the West and its sanction strategy, the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said in an editorial on Saturday.
For Iran’s leadership, the opening of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is a “great victory over the US, the West and all sanctions,” the paper stressed.
Many Iranians view the Bushehr reactor as an “icon of national pride and technical progress,” it added.
The daily said the Bushehr plant highlighted Iran’s “fruitful resistance” against the West over the past 35 years, in addition to its “self-reliance and its right for a peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
The West, notably the US, had repeatedly pressured Russia to delay the opening of the Bushehr reactor. The Bushehr project dates backs to 1974, when Iran’s American-backed
Pahlavi regime contracted with the German company Siemens to build the reactor.
The company pulled out of the project after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Before making the Russian deal to complete Bushehr, Iran signed agreements with Argentina, Spain and other countries only to see them canceled under intense US pressure.