IRANS LITHIUM DEPOSITS

1. Context

2. Iran's first Lithium Findings

• A senior official in the Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mine, and Trade (MIMT) said that a deposit located in the western province of Hamedan contains some 8.5 million metric tons of lithium ore.
• This is Iran’s first lithium find. If true, this discovery would be a major boost for Iran, whose economy has suffered under US sanctions and embargoes for decades.
• Given lithium’s salience in making batteries, any transition away from fossil fuels is expected to heavily rely on lithium.
• However, this discovery will not immediately be beneficial to Iran 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.

3. Largest identified lithium resources

• According to the US Geological Survey, the world's largest identified lithium resources (not counting Iran) are as follows Bolivia, 21 million tons; Argentina, 20 million tons; Chile, 11 million tons; Australia, 7.9 million tons; China, 6.8 million tons.
• India recently established inferred lithium resources of 5.9 million tons in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir.

4. Importance of Lithium in Today's World

• Lithium is ubiquitous in modern life, found in all kinds of electronic devices, from mobile phones to EVs- basically, anything that requires a rechargeable battery.
• A battery is made up of an anode, cathode, separator, electrolyte, and two current collectors (Positive and Negative).
• Lithium-ion batteries use aqueous electrolyte solutions, where ions transfer to and fro between the anode (negative electrode generally made of graphite) and cathode (positive electrode made of lithium), triggering the recharge and discharge of electrons.
• Even promising alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, such as Quantum Scape Corp's solid-state lithium-metal battery, continue to use lithium.
• This is primarily due to Lithium's low weight as compared to other metals (Such as nickel, used in traditional batteries) as well as its superior electrochemical potential.
• Lithium has become especially valuable in the context of increasing climate concerns with the internal combustion engine and the rise of electric vehicles (EV) as an alternative.
• Currently, all EVs use lithium in their battery packs with demand set to rise exponentially over the coming decades.
• A 2020 World Bank report on clean energy transition estimates that the production of minerals, such as graphite, lithium, and cobalt, could increase by nearly 500 percent by 2050, to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies.

5. US Sanctions on Iran

• The first sanctions were imposed by the US in 1979 when 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days after some radical students stormed the US embassy in Tehran.
• While sanctions were lifted in 1981, they were reimposed in 1987 in response to Iran's actions to support international terrorism.
• Since then, the country has faced various sanctions from the US, the European Union, and the UN, with their severity fluctuating depending on the international political Climate.
• These sanctions, used to try and influence Iran's domestic policies such as its controversial uranium enrichment program, have over the years taken a toll on the Iranian economy and its people.
• They have hampered Iran's ability to participate in the global economy, leaving the country with perennial shortages in all sorts of sectors from food and consumer goods to technology.

6. Challenges lie ahead

• According to the United Nations Framework for classification for Reserves and Resources of Solid Fuels and Mineral Commodities (UNFC 1997), resources are categorized using the three essential criteria affecting their recoverability:

• Economic and Commercial viability (E)
• Field Project status and feasibility (F)
• Geological Knowledge (G)

• India's recent discovery was classified as G4 implying that they are a product of a reconnaissance study, rather than more advanced feasibility and commercial viability studies.
• According to the UNFC, "Reconnaissance study identifies areas of enhanced mineral potential on a regional scale based primarily on results of regional geological studies, regional geological mapping, airborne and indirect methods, preliminary field inspection, as well as geological inference and extrapolation. The objective is to identify mineralized areas worthy of further investigation towards deposit identification".
• It is likely that Iran's discovery is also at this stage of categorization.
• If that is the case, more work is required to establish the commercial viability of the reserve and also a setup where the mining can be carried out.
• Especially in the context of the economic embargoes Iran faces, this will be a challenge.

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