Julian Rush: The Russian press conference is to be at 4pm. We’ve hours to kill. All the crews are hanging round the hotel. It’s going to be a wasted trip.
Mahmud, our fixer, keeps making phone calls. Around us a football team sits in the hotel lobby too. All dressed in black track suit bottoms and lurid orange tops. They’re here to play against the local team.
A rotund, bearded man in a blue shirt walks in. It turns out he’s one of Iran’s top football coaches. Now this is a football mad country and he’s a star. As he reads his paper, guests come up to snap his picture.
Suddenly Mahmud whispers conspiratorially. “Come now!” he says urgently. If we get the plant for one o’clock we can collect our passes and film the outside.
The authorities have relented, it seems, just for us. And, what’s more, we are now able to film in Bushehr town too. Great!
We pitch up at the plant. Half the crews are here already. The rest turn up soon. No exclusive, then, but at least the gamble seems to have paid off.
But wait. First we have to have lunch.
Suspiciously, the canteen is laid for 50 people. Somehow I don’t think permissions were granted at the last minute.
After lunch, the most demented 45 minutes. A bus arrives. We pile on. Grab a few shots as we drive towards the reactor dome. Get off the bus. Randomly, crews and photographers spill out filming anything that moves. It’s impossible to get a shot without someone getting in the way.
I don’t know what the Farsi is for “Everyone back on the bus!” but I think I’ll know by the end of the day.
On the bus. Off the bus. We stop to do a piece to camera. As I try to muster a few coherent thoughts a photographer squats at my feet, snapping madly up at me. Two Iranian TV crews are filming me. Note to self: ask Mahmud how to say “Get lost!” (politely) in Farsi.
The Russians are helping the Iranians finish Bushehr, and the Iranians are trying to do a deal with the Russians over uranium enrichment to defuse the nuclear crisis. The press conference is even more chaotic. More crews turn up – Russian teams who are traveling with Mr Kirienko. The Farsi-Russian translator has thick, black, orange-tinted glasses. Barrel-chested heavies line the room, arms crossed. We learn a little and retire to Bushehr’s old town to find tea.
On the promenade, in the late afternoon sun, families and couples stroll up and down. It’s miles from the pollution and frenetic traffic of Tehran. Powerful open speedboats occasionally roar along in the sea – the local white-knuckle ride here apparently; they’re for hire.
But we’re able to talk calmly and sensibly to people and get some interesting views on the nuclear issue. This place, after all, may well be a target if America or Israel ever seriously contemplates some sort of pre-emptive military action over all this.
The footballers are at the airport when we arrive. Glum. They lost.
But at least it’s an Airbus again, for the flight back to Tehran. Phew!
This blog is part of News from Iran week from Channel 4 News.
Julian Rush: Sometimes I feel I ought to buy a corduroy jacket, with leather patches on the sleeves, grow a beard and some shaggy hair (some chance! Ed) and wave my arms around on Open University TV programmes. 
