Iran launches first successful satellite

Two stage rockets can reach the east coast of the US pretty easily. Add another stage and you can plant it anywhere on the planet. If they can sit a satellite on top of a rocket, they can sit a nuclear warhead on it. Is it just chance they are working on rockets with that capability and trying to increase their nuclear technology? I really don't think it is. I do think before we ever pull out of Iraq, we're going to at war with Iran.

Iran launches first successful satellite

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Iran announced its first successful satellite launch yesterday, a step into the space age as well as a showy demonstration of firepower amid continued concerns about the Islamic republic's nuclear program and regional ambitions.

The satellite, called Omid, or "hope," was apparently launched into orbit late Monday or early yesterday morning using an Iranian-made Safir-2 carrier rocket, the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, reported.

State television showed fire erupting from a rocket painted with the red, white, and green colors of the Iranian flag as it rose against a pitch-black sky.

A Pentagon official and other analysts confirmed the launch. Western officials said it underscored international concern about Iran's increased mastery of missile technology that could be used for military purposes. "This action does not convince us that Iran is acting responsibly to advance stability or security in the region," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Iran said the satellite and upcoming launches were meant for peaceful scientific purposes to meet the country's domestic needs, IRNA reported. Iran joins a list of nine other nations and a European consortium that have successfully launched satellites into orbit.

"Your children have sent Iran's first domestic satellite into orbit," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, according to the website of the state-owned English-language Press TV news channel. "Iran's official presence in space has been added to the pages of history."

The two-stage rocket launch, confirmed in official data publicized by physicists at several websites, also showed Iran's ability to defy US and international sanctions aimed at denying it technologies with both military and civilian applications.

Iran and the West are at odds over Iran's nuclear program, which the United States, Israel, and others suspect is ultimately meant to produce weapons and which Iran insists is for peaceful civilian purposes only. Its drive to master the production of potentially dual-use nuclear fuel has been accompanied by an effort to improve the range and accuracy of its rockets.

Since Sputnik, space programs have served as a way to test and showcase missile range and power as well as test the limits of science, a fact US officials highlighted in their public comments.

"The technology that is used to get this satellite into orbit . . . is one that could also be used to propel long range ballistic missiles," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in Washington.

US State Department spokesman Robert Wood called the launch "a matter of great concern" and said any attempt by Iran to improve its military capacity violates United Nations Security Council resolutions forbidding Iran to develop its missile technology.

The launch doesn't alter the region's strategic calculus. Iran has long had missiles that could reach 800 or so miles away to its regional rival, Israel. One analyst estimated that Iran could now theoretically deliver a payload of up to 1,500 pounds about 1,500 miles away, allowing it a greater range, but one that does not yet reach North America nor much of Europe.

At the same time, "Once someone has the ability to launch something into space it can in fact reach every place on the face of the earth," Uzi Rubin, a former Israeli defense official, said in a television interview.

Iran hired Russia to launch its first domestically built satellite into space in 2005, and another one jointly owned by Iran, China, and Thailand was launched last year. Iran test-launched its first satellite carrier rocket, Safir-1 in August, in what US officials then dismissed as a failure. Some specialists said at the time that the United States was engaged in wishful thinking, downplaying Iran's growing capabilities in order to deny it leverage in negotiations.

According to Iranian media, Omid is a telecommunications research satellite that will transmit data while orbiting earth 15 times a day.

source:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/02/04/iran_launches_first_successful_satellite/

Carolina Hound wrote:Two stage rockets can reach the east coast of the US pretty easily. Add another stage and you can plant it anywhere on the planet. If they can sit a satellite on top of a rocket, they can sit a nuclear warhead on it. Is it just chance they are working on rockets with that capability and trying to increase their nuclear technology? I really don't think it is. I do think before we ever pull out of Iraq, we're going to at war with Iran.

Iran is a concern, but I think they can be dealt with short of militarily. The internal situation there is ripe for a soviet-east european style collapse from within, if the US and EU play their cards right. There's a really good article here from 2005, with a bunch more linked on the page:
As Iran Presses Its Ambitions, Its Young See Theirs Denied-Lack of Economic Opportunity Leads Many to Drugs

and a whole slew of well informed opinion pieces here, though some might require a subscription to read:
Iran embodies 21st-century world politics: a geriatric, Islamic, post-revolutionary, nuclear state amidst a youthful, idea-hungry, proto-democratic, networked society. Iranians - from Tehran to Los Angeles via Berlin - rethink their country’s identity and future on openDemocracy.

Right now I think we face a bigger danger from Pakistan, who already have nukes and are close to becoming a failed state.

I think it's quite plausible that we'll be in a military conflict with that whole area before long. I wonder if India and China are getting a bit nervous with all this stuff going on. I would if I was them.