South Korea has signed three memoranda of understanding for implementing major water projects in Iran.
Mohammad Reza Rezazadeh, the executive director of Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company, made the statement on Sunday, ISNA reported.
The MoUs, worth $3.4 billion, include building two hydroelectric dams of Bakhtiari in the western Lorestan Province and Karoun 2 across the Karoun River that stretches along part of Iran's western borders and flows into Iraq.
Touted as one of the biggest energy projects to be built with foreign cooperation, Lorestan Dam is estimated to cost $1.7 billion. It will be built by South Korean industrial conglomerate Daelim in seven years.
The Korean side is set to fund 85% of the project with a return on investment of 13 years.
A third agreement calls for transferring water from a branch of Karoun River to Iran's central regions that are grappling with a worsening water crisis.
The project aims to link Karoun to Iran's central plateau through a small tunnel and a mostly land-based pipeline.
It is a revision of a disputed plan—known as Dasht-e-Behesht Water Transfer Plan—that called for carrying water through a much lengthier 64-kilometer tunnel.
Rezazadeh did not specify when the MoUs were signed, but the triple agreements were part of a larger framework of cooperation discussed during the visit of South Korea's President Park Geun-hye to Tehran earlier this month.
