Iran Claims to Have Successfully Conducted a Space Launch

The Simorgh rocket carrying three satellites is seen at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Semnan province, Iran, on Jan. 28, 2024. Iranian Ministry of Defense/West Asia News Agency/via Reuters

Iran conducted a successful space launch on Friday using its Simorgh rocket, according to Iranian state television and Fars, the state-owned news agency.

Fars said the rocket carried the Samān-1 module, a small CubeSat satellite, and a research payload, into space from Imam Khomeini spaceport in the north-eastern province of Semnan, which is home to Iran’s civilian space program.

Iranian state television said all three, “were successfully placed in an elliptical orbit with a high point of 410 km [255 miles] and a low point of 300 km [186 miles].”

Fars said, “The Samān-1 orbital transfer module represents a crucial step forward in Iran’s ability to transfer satellites into higher orbits.”

There have been a series of failed launches at Imam Khomeini spaceport, and there has been no immediate independent confirmation Friday’s launch was successful.

In January, Iran said it had successfully launched three satellites into space using the same Simorgh rocket. Then, in September, it claimed to have launched a research satellite, Chamran-1.

Iran has always denied it is developing nuclear weapons and says its space program is for purely civilian purposes.

But Shahin Gobadi from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of Iranian opposition groups, recently told The Epoch Times the regime in Tehran had been lying to the world for years.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are initially fired into space, can be used to deliver nuclear weapons.

The United States has previously said Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution, and has urged Tehran not to undertake activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

‘Shorten The Timeline’

A report in July by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said, “Iran’s work on space-launch vehicles, including its Simorgh, probably would shorten the timeline to produce an intercontinental ballistic missile, if it decided to develop one, because the systems use similar technologies.”

U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003, and last month the IAEA passed a resolution condemning Tehran for failing to cooperate with the agency’s inspectors.

In a quarterly report published on Nov. 19, the IAEA said the Iranian regime had amassed a stockpile of enriched uranium that was more than 32 times the limit set by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.

The director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, has said Tehran could be “weeks away” from having enough enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons.

United Nations sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile programme expired in Oct. 2023.

The Iranian announcement on Friday, comes amid huge tensions in the Middle East where Israel has been battling Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, since gunmen from the Palestinian group launched an attack on Oct. 7, 2023 which claimed the lives of 1,200 Israelis.

While the conflict in the Gaza strip goes on, an uneasy cease-fire—which began on Nov. 27—holds in Lebanon.

In Syria, Iran’s close ally Bashar al-Assad, has suffered a series of military defeats, including the fall of Aleppo on Nov. 30 and the withdrawal of government troops from the central city of Hama on Dec. 5.

Under Iran’s former President Hassan Rouhani, the Islamic Republic slowed its space program but President Ebrahim Raisi, who came to power in 2021, pushed the program forward.

Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen near a "3 Khordad" system which is said to have been used to shoot down a U.S. military drone, according to the state-sponsored news agency Fars, in this undated handout picture. Fars news/Handout via Reuters

Iran’s current President Masoud Pezeshkian, has yet to signal a strategy when it comes to Iran’s space program.

But Pezeshkian is subordinate to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who have been at the heart of raising tensions with Israel and the West.

The U.S. military has not commented on the Iranian launch.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.