Turan Research Center

Russia has spent the past several years expanding its nuclear footprint across the Middle East. While most attention has focused on Rosatom’s projects in Iran and Turkey, the state corporation has also pushed deeper into other major regional markets. The result is a layered web of strategic interdependencies that gives Moscow flexible geopolitical leverage in a region where its other instruments of influence have weakened.

For Russia, nuclear energy is one of the more durable instruments of global power projection. From Africa to Central Asia to Southeast Asia, Rosatom has captured a dominant share of new nuclear construction at a moment when the demand for stable, low-carbon baseload is rising. Renewables remain attractive, but their rollout is uneven. Nuclear is increasingly framed as both safe and long-term. Rosatom presents itself as more than a builder, exporting digital tools, small modular reactors, and advanced fuel-cycle services as part of a broader package of technological modernization.

Cooperatoin with Iran

Iran remains Rosatom’s anchor client. In September 2025, the two sides inked a memorandum of cooperation on the construction of small nuclear power plants in the Islamic Republic. Iran’s stated goal, according to AEOI head Mohammad Eslami, is eight nuclear power plants generating 20GW of electricity by 2040. Implementation will involve a series of follow-on agreements between Rosatom and AEOI on design and construction. Tehran has proposedconstructing large-capacity units at a new site, in addition to the Bushehr NPP, and exploring the possibility of constructing small nuclear power plants. Russia is expected to build RITM-200 reactors with a capacity of 50-60 MW,utilizing similar technology as what has been long used in its nuclear icebreaker fleet.

The choice of smaller reactors is not incidental. After Iran’s confrontations with Israel — first the June 2025 strikes and then the joint US-Israeli offensive launched in February 2026 — the Iranian leadership appears to favor smaller, more dispersed plants that are harder to characterize as strategic targets. The presence of Russian personnel and Russian-supplied technology may also raise the political cost of any future strike, though Russia-Israel ties have cooled considerably in recent years and that calculus is no longer what it once was.

Just two days after the small-reactor MoU, on 26 September 2025, Iran and Rosatom signed a far larger contract: a $25 billion deal for four 1,255 MW reactors at Sirik, in Hormozgan province, also known as the Hormoz nuclear plant. The agreement was concluded hours before the UN snapback sanctions on Iran took effect, lending it both commercial and political weight. Russia is also continuing construction of two additional VVER-1000 reactors at Bushehr (Bushehr-2), with completion currently targeted for 2029-31, though Western sanctions and component shortages have repeatedly slowed work.

Russia prides itself on having built Bushehr-1, the first civilian nuclear power plant in the Middle East. The originalcontract with Atomstroyexport was signed in January 1995. In the difficult years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bushehr helped revive Russia’s struggling nuclear sector: roughly 300 Russian enterprises and research institutes — including Atomenergoproekt and the Kurchatov Institute — were involved in the project. Construction stretched through the 2000s; the reactor reached criticality in May 2011, was connected to the grid that September, and entered commercial operation in 2013. In November 2014, Russia and Iran signed an additional protocol envisioning four moreunits at the Bushehr site and four more at a separate, undisclosed location. Work on the second reactor, Bushehr-2, has since progressed slowly, hampered by Western sanctions on Iran and broader geopolitical instability in the Middle East.

The current US-Israel war on Iran has hampered, but not severed, nuclear cooperation between Moscow and Tehran. On April 9, Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev said that roughly 128 staff remained at Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and that further evacuations were planned. By April 20, Likhachev confirmed in Tashkent that more than 600 personnel had been evacuated to Russia via Armenia, with only about 20 volunteers left on site, and pledged that construction at new Iranian facilities would resume “as quickly as possible” once the fighting ends.

Turkey, Egypt, and Beyond:

In Turkey, Rosatom is constructing the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. Valued at approximately $20 billion, the project is being delivered under a Build-Own-Operate mode, with Rosatom retaining ownership and operational control. Once all four 1,200 MW units are online, Akkuyu is expected to supply about 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity. The first unit is due to be commissioned in 2026, with the remaining units phased in through 2028.

A similar dynamic is visible in Egypt, where Rosatom is constructing the El Dabaa nuclear power plant. Backed by Russian state loans, El Dabaa is a cornerstone of Egypt’s energy diversification strategy. Its symbolic weight is also considerable: Cairo is willing to maintain and expand strategic ties with Moscow despite Western pressure.

Beyond these three anchor projects, Rosatom is steadily working to widen its regional footprint. In January 2026, the company offered the UAE its full product line of large and small, land-based and floating reactors, and the UAE has separately been discussed as a potential investor in third-country Rosatom projects, including Akkuyu. Memoranda of cooperation are also in place with Saudi Arabia and Iraq, with Iraq finalizing a 2024 MoU on the peaceful use of nuclear energy and developing nuclear-education ties with Russian institutions. The 2015 Jordan-Rosatom deal for a $10 billion two-unit plant was scrapped in 2018, but Amman and Moscow have since reorganized cooperation around small modular reactors — a shift that fits the broader pattern of Rosatom recalibrating to local fiscal and political conditions.

For the Middle East governments, Rosatom is a way to diversify their nuclear partnerships beyond Western and Chinese suppliers. It comes without the political conditionality often attached to Western contracts, and it offers something Western and even Chinese vendors struggle to match: a full-service package spanning construction, fuel supply, training, regulatory support, and spent-fuel management. Rosatom's flexibility — across reactor sizes, deployment models, and financing arrangements — also fits regional capitals' preference for what is increasingly described as multi-alignment.

For Moscow, expanding Rosatom’s regional presence is part of a wider pivot toward the Global South in the wake of Russia’s near-total rupture with the West after 2022. Nuclear projects suit this aspiration well. They lock recipient countries into multi-decade dependencies on Russian technology, fuel, and expertise, and they generate diffuse soft power dividends through training programs and information campaigns shaping local opinion in Moscow’s favor.

For now, Rosatom’s influence in the Middle East is likely to persist and potentially expand. Sanctions have raised costs and slowed schedules, but neither American nor European nuclear companies are yet able to match Rosatom’s financing or its full package offer. Chinese companies, however are bridging the gap. In Central Asia, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) now successfully competes with Rosatom; a similar dynamic might eventually reach the Middle East. But that is a future contest. The present picture is striking: with the Assad dynasty gone in Syria and Iran’s conventional power humbled by Israel and the United States, Russia’s regional posture should by all expectations be unraveling. Rosatom’s expanding pipelines tell a different story — one in Moscow has shown itself capable of substituting nuclear contracts for the military and political instruments it has lost.

Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center and a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on the history of the Silk Roads and the interests of great powers in the Middle East and the Caucasus.