The Revolutionary Guard, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched an “imaging satellite” into orbit, the Iranian Minister of Telecommunications announced this Wednesday.
“Thanks to the efforts of experts from the aerospace branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ‘Nour-3’ imaging satellite was successfully put into orbit 450 kilometers from the Earth by the ‘Qassed’ launcher,” Issa revealed. Zarepour, quoted by the IRNA Agency official.
The minister did not provide details about the nature and objectives of the satellite, whose launch occurs more than three years after that of the first military satellite of the Revolutionary Guards, ‘Nour-1’, in April 2020.
Tehran maintains that its aerospace activities are peaceful and in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution.
But Western governments fear that Iran’s satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, which Iran has always denied wanting to build.
In March 2022, the Revolutionary Guard announced the launch into orbit of a new military reconnaissance satellite called ‘Nour-2’.
Then, in August 2022, Iran launched the ‘Khayyam’ satellite (named after Persian academic Omar Khayyam) with a ‘Soyuz-2.1B’ rocket from the Moscow-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The Iranian space agency said the spacecraft had been built by the Russians under Iranian supervision.
At the time, the United States claimed that ‘Khayyam’ was intended for “espionage” activities, calling Moscow’s growing cooperation with Tehran a serious “threat.”
The launch of the new satellite comes amid speculation about possible progress in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, which are at an impasse.
In an interview with the Japanese news agency Kyodo, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, spoke of “a Japanese plan to relaunch the negotiations” between Iran and the great powers signatories of the agreement signed in 2015, which are stalled. since they left the United States in 2018.
Last Tuesday, Tehran also denied press reports about direct talks with the United States, despite the fact that the two countries have not maintained diplomatic relations since 1980.
Source: TSF
