An official of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said that the country's first nuclear power plant will join the national power grid by January, the semi- official Fars news agency reported on Sunday.

"The Bushehr nuclear power plant will join the national power grid in the next 40 days," Deputy Head of AEOI Behzad Soltani told reporters in Iran's Northeastern city of Mashhad on Saturday.

"The sanctions imposed on the country by the West could never undermine the country's nuclear progress and Iran's future nuclear advances will prove invalidation of enemies' pressures," Soltani was quoted as saying.

In October, Iran began loading uranium fuel rods into the core of its first nuclear power plant, a process considered as the last major step to start up the long-delayed Russia-built reactor.

Russia signed an agreement worth 1 billion U.S. dollars in 1995 to take over the project. Its completion, first scheduled for 1999, was postponed several times by mounting technological and financial challenges and interruptions under pressures from the United States.

Under a deal between Moscow and Tehran in 2005, Russia will provide nuclear fuel for Iran and take back all spent reactor fuel, and the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, will be able to verify that no fuel or waste is diverted elsewhere.