Outside of the fact that finding reserves of a fairly rare element everyone is crazy to get their hands on, this report could probably be filed in the “Nothing but bad news/Why’d it have to be those guys?!” drawer.
Iran says it’s discovered a massive deposit of lithium — a key element in batteries for devices and electric vehicles — in one of its western provinces.
“For the first time in Iran, a lithium reserve has been discovered in Hamedan,” a mountainous province in the country’s west, Mohammad Hadi Ahmadi, an official at Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade, was quoted as saying on Iranian state television Saturday.
Every report about the recent discovery points to a huge number. Looks to be a real gold mine for the Islamic regime, dropped into their shrouded laps at a moment when they’re really struggling.
… The ministry believes the deposit holds 8.5 million tons of lithium, which is often called “white gold” for the rapidly growing electric vehicle industry. If the claimed figure is accurate, that would make the deposit the second-largest known lithium reserve in the world after Chile, which holds 9.2 million metric tons of the metal, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
…Iran’s lithium deposit news, if true, would be a lifeline for the country’s battered economy.
Weighed down by several years of heavy international sanctions and faced with a spiraling currency, which hit its lowest point against the dollar in late February, Iran would benefit greatly from the ability to export such valued resources — though its trading partners would likely be limited due to those sanctions.
An Iran with a viable, rare source of income is a real drag for the rest of the world and the Iranian people. Oil had been their only true commodity and that can be sourced from other places. A substantial lithium stockpile is a whole ‘nother ballgame, and, as such, how porous are sanctions going to be?
At the moment – thanks to the legendary opaqueness of anything coming out of Tehran – the best guesstimate is that there is anticipated to be about 4 years between this announcement and any benefit monetarily to the regime.
…However, this discovery will not immediately be beneficial to Iran. According to Ahmadi, it will take about four years to prepare the lithium mines discovered in Qahavand Plain, Hamadan, for operation, with the deposits stretching across a five-six square kilometer area.
Crucially, Iran’s official statements have not mentioned the stage of prospecting or provided any technical information about the reserves yet. While Iran may very well have discovered lithium ore reserves, the true significance of the finding can only be assessed once more information about said reserves is released.
While lithium prices have come off their highs in recent months, due to reduced demand for EVs, there is an unrelenting chess game in progress to control the supplies. If Iran can be considered a major player in the field after this, that’s very concerning. Epecially in light of who the Iranians have been building economic ties with in the face of crippling Western sanctions and formerly aggressive U.S. counter-terrorism actions.
…Iran two years ago signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with China, so its newfound lithium wealth also looks likely to strengthen China’s already extensive control of the supply chain for strategically and economically important minerals. This occurred coincidentally not long after the US killed a top Iranian general with a drone strike.
...Nonetheless, interest in securing the strategic supply chain remains. Such efforts have been referred to as the new Great Game, likening today’s international race to make alliances and secure control of minerals and metals to the political rivalry between the British Empire and the Russian Empire in Central Asia from 1830 to 1895.
For its part, among other initiatives, the US hopes to boost domestic lithium production this spring with a Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables project, based in Imperial County, California. The project aims to extract lithium from geothermal brine and, if successful, could scale up to 90,000 metric tons of lithium per year by 2026, according to the White House.
Enjoy the new Great Game, and may the odds be ever in your favor.
The money Iran raises will never make it to the Martyrs Crippled Women and Children’s Scholarship Fund. Oh, no. Its citizens will be the last to benefit from any sudden wealth pouring into the country. In fact, what little freedoms they’ve managed to wrest from a failing regime up to now, they may as well wave goodbye to. Regime activists are already busy on Twitter.
Besides more money funneled to its terror network around the world, the Iranians have other irons in the fire right at home that the lithium windfall will augment.
…There’s another use of Lithium. A naturally occurring isotope of the element – 6Li – is a key ingredient in the fusion fuel of practical thermonuclear weapons. We mention that because Iran is so very keen on developing its own nuclear weapons.
We also can’t bring up Li-6 without mentioning the United States’ Castle Bravo thermo-nuke test in the early 1950s that was a much larger bang than expected – a 15MT explosion versus the predicted 6MT – due to the Americans thinking the abundant 7Li isotope in the fuel fusion would be inert. Reader, it was not, it had a sufficient effect on the reaction, and fallout from the experiment was widespread and disastrous.
None of this is good.
