NCRI – The following is a report by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger on Iranian regime’s space project which is described by analysts as a threat to world security. The report is published in today’s issue of The New York Times titled "Iran’s eye on outer space."
The New York Times – The spacecraft is small by world standards – a microsatellite of a few hundred pounds. Launched in October by the Russians for a wealthy client, it orbits the earth once every 99 minutes and reportedly has a camera for peering down on large swaths of land.
But what makes this satellite particularly interesting is not its capabilities, which are rudimentary, but its owner: Iran. With last year’s launching and another planned for the next few weeks, Tehran has become the newest member of the international space club.
The question now asked in Washington and other capitals is whether Iran’s efforts are simply part of its drive to expand its technical prowess or an attempt to add another building block to its nuclear program. In that sense, it is the newest piece of the Iranian atomic puzzle.
To some government analysts and other experts in the West, Iran’s space debut is potentially worrisome. While world attention has focused on whether Iran is clandestinely seeking nuclear arms, these analysts say the launchings mark a new stage in its growing efforts to master a range of sophisticated technologies, including rockets and satellites. The concern is that Tehran could one day turn such advances to atomic ends.
"It may appear tempting to dismiss Iranian efforts" as relatively crude, said John Sheldon, an analyst at the Center for Defense and International Security Studies in Britain who recently wrote a report on Tehran’s space program. "But Iran has already demonstrated a persistence and patience that would indicate it is prepared to play a long game in order to achieve its ambitions."
Iran has publicly rejected the goal of developing unconventional arms. It says its space and rocket efforts are either entirely peaceful, aimed at improving the state’s telecommunications and monitoring natural disasters – strong earthquakes shook Iran on Friday – or are military efforts meant to boost its defenses with conventional weapons.
But some Western analysts note that such technologies can also have atomic roles and that a crucial element of a credible nuclear arsenal is the ability to launch a missile accurately and guide a warhead to its target. While Iran now depends on Russia to launch its satellites into orbit, it has vowed to do so itself, and is developing a family of increasingly large rockets. In theory, the biggest could hurl not only satellites into space but warheads between continents.
"The real issue is that they have a very large booster under development," said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who wrote a recent report on Iran’s nuclear effort.
He said Tehran’s bid to develop new rocket and space technologies might be nothing more at this point than its exploring of technological options, at times quite modestly, as in its recent effort to loft experimental satellites.
"That doesn’t mean the potential should be minimized," Cordesman said. "We know these states can achieve technical surprise."
On Sunday, Iran said it had test-fired a fast underwater missile that could evade sonar, and on Friday announced that it had launched a new rocket that can carry multiple warheads and elude radar. The military actions, accompanied by film clips on state television during a week of naval maneuvers, seemed calculated to defy growing pressure on Tehran.
So far, U.S. officials say they have not protested Iran’s space program. Intelligence agencies reviewed information about the satellite launching last fall, but concluded that it warranted no action. Nor has the United States urged Russia – a key player in the current negotiations with Iran over its efforts to enrich uranium – to halt the launchings.
But a senior American official who spoke anonymously because he was unauthorized to address the topic publicly said the United States was "taking another look" at pressing Moscow to end the space assistance as a way of pressuring Iran to stop the enrichment of nuclear material.
Analysts across the political spectrum seem to agree that the Iranian missile and satellite programs bear watching, even if judged as presenting no current threat to the United States.
"It’s clearly interesting to see what direction they’re going," said David Wright, a space analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a policy research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The UN Security Council is now debating possible sanctions against Iran because many states worry that Tehran’s atomic push conceals a clandestine effort to acquire an atom bomb. American intelligence agencies estimate that Iran is 5 to 10 years away from having enough material for a nuclear weapon.
John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, recently called the danger that Tehran "will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with ballistic missiles Iran already possesses" a cause "for immediate concern." Iran has missiles that can reach about 1,000 miles, or 1,600 kilometers, which is as far away as Israel and, as Negroponte put it, has "the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East."
American intelligence officials estimate that it might field an intercontinental missile by 2015, but such forecasts are always rough approximations.
Scores of nations have satellites, including Algeria, Greece, Spain and Tonga. But only a dozen or so have rockets big and powerful enough to put satellites into orbit. In the Middle East, only Israel can now do so.
Tehran’s effort to build a fleet of rockets, and to buy and make satellites, has received technical help from not only from Russia but China, India, Italy and North Korea.
Its effort began during the war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988, when Baghdad fired many rockets and Tehran worked hard to respond in kind. A recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected arms analysis group in London, sketched the Islamic state’s progress.
At first, Iran bought Russian Scud missiles and then learned how to make them on its own, calling them Shahab-1, Persian for shooting star. The missiles, 36 feet, or 10 meters, tall, can throw one- ton warheads roughly 200 miles. By 1991, Iran learned how to extend their range to about 300 miles, naming the new weapon Shahab-2.
Iran fired waves of these missiles in 1994, 1999 and 2001 at the armed camps of the National Liberation Army of Iran, a dissident force based in Iraq committed to overthrowing Tehran’s regime.
During that period, Iran also sought to develop a new, more powerful family of missiles, dubbing them Shahab-3. Based on a North Korean model, they stand 56 feet tall.
In recent military parades, it has draped them with banners reading, "We will crush America" and "Wipe Israel off the map." Iran cloaks its advanced rocket work in as much secrecy as possible. However, Western analysts say many signs and declarations indicate that Tehran is working hard on missiles powerful enough to launch satellites into space or warheads between continents.
Charles Vick, an expert on the Iranian rocket program at GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria, Virginia, said one strategy was apparently to stack a Shahab-1 or Shahab-2 atop a Shahab-3, making a tall missile with two stages. It might have a range of nearly 2,000 miles. Other variants, Vick said, would go further.
Cordesman and Khalid Al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said in a recent report that advanced models, if perfected, would "enable Iran to target the U.S. Eastern Seaboard."
