Iran says it carried out a profitable house launch in a program lengthy criticized by West

A handout image offered by the Iranian Defence Ministry on December 6, 2024 exhibits Iran’s two-stage Simorgh (Phoenix) satellite tv for pc service being launched from a platform on the Imam Khomeini spaceport in metropolis of Semnan. – Iran on December 4 efficiently launched on its heaviest house payload, which features a satellite tv for pc and an area tug, utilizing a domestically developed satellite tv for pc service, official media reported.
| Picture Credit score: AFP

Iran stated Friday (December 6, 2024) it carried out a profitable house launch, the newest for its program the West alleges improves Tehran’s ballistic missile program.

Iran carried out the launch utilizing its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had had a collection of failed launches, at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport in rural Semnan province. That is the positioning of Iran’s civilian house program.

Iran’s Simorgh program

The Simorgh carried what Iran described as an “orbital propulsion system,” in addition to two analysis programs to a 400-kilometer (250-mile) orbit above the Earth. A system that might change the orbit of a spacecraft would enable Iran to geo-synchronize the orbits of its satellites. Tehran has lengthy sought that capability.

Iran additionally put the payload of the Simorgh at 300 kilograms (660 kilos), heavier than its earlier profitable launches.

There was no speedy unbiased affirmation the launch was profitable. The U.S. army didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the broader Center East over Israel’s continued conflict on Hamas within the Gaza Strip and as an uneasy ceasefire holds in Lebanon.

United States on Iran’s satellite tv for pc launches

America has beforehand stated Iran’s satellite tv for pc launches defy a U.N. Safety Council decision and known as on Tehran to undertake no exercise involving ballistic missiles able to delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions associated to Iran’s ballistic missile program expired in October 2023.

“Iran’s work on space-launch automobiles — together with its Simorgh — in all probability would shorten the timeline to provide an intercontinental ballistic missile, if it determined to develop one, as a result of the programs use related applied sciences,” a U.S. intelligence neighborhood report launched in July stated.

Underneath Iran’s comparatively average former President Hassan Rouhani, the Islamic Republic slowed its house program for worry of elevating tensions with the West. The late hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, a protégé of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who got here to energy in 2021, pushed this system ahead. Raisi died in a helicopter crash in Could.

Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been signaling he desires to barter with the West over sanctions, has but to supply technique in the case of Iran’s ambitions in house. The Simorgh launch represented the primary for his administration from the nation’s civil house program. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard carried out a profitable launch in its parallel program in September.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles can be utilized to ship nuclear weapons. Iran is now producing uranium near weapons-grade ranges after the collapse of its nuclear cope with world powers. Tehran has sufficient enriched uranium for “a number of” nuclear weapons, if it chooses to provide them, the top of the Worldwide Atomic Power Company repeatedly has warned.

Iran has at all times denied searching for nuclear weapons and says its house program, like its nuclear actions, is for purely civilian functions. Nonetheless, U.S. intelligence companies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized army nuclear program up till 2003.