The short answer is that Iran’s power system is large, heavily dependent on thermal generation, and widely dispersed – making it difficult to disable through limited military strikes.
A system built on thermal power
According to Iran’s Ministry of Energy, the country has around 40.6 million electricity subscribers, including 32.3 million residential users.
Although official figures put hydroelectric power at 13.4% of capacity, the actual share is less than 5%, largely due to reservoir conditions.
Instead, Iran relies overwhelmingly on thermal power plants, which generate more than 95% of its electricity.
There are about 130 thermal plants across the country, with a combined capacity of 78,000 megawatts. Among them, around 20 plants exceed 1,000 megawatts, and three exceed 2,000 megawatts.
Where the power is generated
The largest facility is the Damavand power plant, with a capacity of about 2,900 megawatts.
Also known as the Pakdasht plant, it covers roughly 200 hectares and is located 50 kilometers southeast of Tehran on the Khavaran road. Its construction cost was close to 2 billion euros.
The Neka (Behshahr) power plant, also around 200 hectares, is located along the Caspian Sea in Mazandaran province and has a capacity of about 2,200 megawatts.
The Rajaei power plant, along the Karaj-Qazvin road, produces around 2,000 megawatts and spans about 350 hectares.
Around Tehran, five major plants – Damavand, Rajaei, Montazer Ghaem, Roudshour (Rudshur), and Mofatteh – play a central role in supplying electricity.
Within the capital itself, smaller plants – Besat, Rey, Tarasht, and Parand – operate at much lower capacity. The largest among them, Parand, produces about 950 megawatts, while Besat generates around 250 megawatts and Tarasht only 50 megawatts.
Hard targets, limited impact
Large power plants are not easy targets.
A facility like Damavand, with multiple cooling towers and units spread across 200 hectares – roughly 30 times the size of Tehran’s Azadi Square – would require a wide-scale attack to fully disable.
Even then, the impact on the national grid would be limited.
The complete destruction of Damavand would remove only 3.7% of Iran’s total electricity generation capacity. Part of that loss could be offset by halting about 400 megawatts of electricity exports.
A decentralized grid
Iran’s electricity system is not concentrated in a few locations. Its transmission and sub-transmission network extends about 133,000 kilometers, and when urban and rural lines are included, the total exceeds 1.3 million kilometers.
The system is supported by 857,000 transformers and an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 large and medium substations across the country.
Strikes on substations could cause temporary, localized outages, but they can be replaced relatively quickly.
For example, after blue flashes were seen in the skies over western Tehran and Karaj – likely caused by explosions at power substations – electricity in western Tehran was cut temporarily before being restored.
Can Iran be plunged into darkness?
Given this scale and dispersion, targeting one or several power plants is unlikely to cause a nationwide blackout.
Even significant damage would be absorbed by the broader network, limiting the impact to specific areas and short timeframes.