Iran satellite launch sends shockwaves through West

[LahoreEstate]

Iran satellite launch sends shockwaves through West




Wednesday, February 04, 2009
TEHRAN: Iran said it had launched a domestically made satellite into orbit for the first time on Tuesday, prompting further concern among Western powers and in Israel over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran said the launch of the Omid (Hope) research and telecom satellite was a major step in its space technology timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into orbit could also be used for launching warheads, although Iran says it has no plans to do so.

“Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadsaid in a televised message, adding the launch was successful. Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said Omid was orbiting earth. The ISNA news agency quoted him as saying: “We have established communications with it and the necessary information has been received.” Sending the Omid into space is a message to the world that Iran is “very powerful and you have to deal with us in the right way,” an Iranian political analyst said.

The US and British officials said the Iranian satellite programme may use technology that could be used for ballistic missiles, and noted the United Nations has sought to discourage Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.

US State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters of the launch: “That’s of grave concern to us.” British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said it “underlines and illustrates our serious concerns about Iran’s intentions,” adding it sent the “wrong signal to the international community.”

The United States will use “all elements of our national power” to deal with Iran, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday after Iran said it had launched a satellite into orbit. “This action does not convince us that Iran is acting responsibly to advance stability or security in the region,” Gibbs told reporters,

“The satellite technology they have deployed is probably not state-of-the-art, but for the Iranians this is an important symbolic step forward,” a US national security official said on Tuesday.

Iran’s announcement that it has launched its first satellite would, if true, confirm that the Islamic republic has missiles capable of striking Israel and southeast Europe, a Nato officer said on Tuesday. However the officer said, on condition of anonymity, that it could take up to a week to verify whether Tehran’s claim that it had sent an Omid (Hope) satellite into space on a home-built Safir-2 space rocket was true. Iran’s launch of its first domestically made satellite into orbit was “a worrying development,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday.

Senior officials from six world powers — the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China — will meet on Wednesday to discuss the nuclear row with Iran. It is their first meeting since US President Barack Obama took office.

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