Iran Claims Satellite Launch, Don't Panic
By Steve Hynd Tuesday Feb 03, 2009 4:30pmHat tip - Noah at Danger Room
When Iraq launched a three-stage rudimentary satellite booster into space in December 1989, probably based upon the Argentinian "Condor" ballistic missile, hawks in the West went crazy, declaiming that this proved Iraq was after an intercontinental WMD ability. We all know how that turned out.
Today it's "deja vu all over again" as Iran becomes the eleventh nation to prove it can launch a satellite into orbit - something it stated it would do as long ago as January 2004. It's stated aim is to grab a slice of the lucrative satellite launch industry - alongside major players like Russia, the US, China and Europe but also alongside nations like Brazil, Israel, Japan and India - as well as launch its own satellites for telecommunications, weather and earthquake monitoring and security (spy-sat) purposes. It already has one satellite in orbit, which it paid Russia hard currency to launch.
In the Guardian, Julian Borger looks at how the launch is seen differently in Iran and the West.
For the Iranian government it is an important milestone along the road to reclaiming Persia's ancient claim to major power status, which it feels the jealous west is trying to deny it.
It is also enormously significant in Iranian internal politics. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got elected promising economic benefits for the common man and modernisation. He has made a complete mess of the first part of that mission. Delivering the second is important for his prospects of re-election in June, in the eyes of both the average voter and – even more importantly, given the controlled nature of Iranian democracy – the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
From Washington, London and some other western capitals, the launch is seen primarily through the prism of Iran's nuclear project. The capacity to put an object into space, together with the feared capability to build a nuclear device, spells – for some at least – the eventual threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the US.
"There are dual applications for satellite launching technology in Iran's ballistic missile programme. As a result we think this sends the wrong signal to the international community, which has already passed five successive UN security council resolutions on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes," Bill Rammell, the minister of state at the [British] Foreign Office, said today.
Iranian assertions that their staging experiments were always aimed at getting into the lucrative satelite launching business, rather than at ICBMs, go forgotten...when Iran proves to prospective customers that it can launch a satellite. Amazing.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a matter of national pride and foreign currency income doesn't have a more sinister agenda behind it. Mohammed El-Baradei reminded the WaPo on Monday that neither the IAEA nor the US intelligence community has any evidence of a current Iranian nuclear weapons program. It's become fashionable of late to just ignore that - President Obama being one keynote offender - but eventually the hawks will have to confront the lack of evidence, if they can.
Crossposted from Newshoggers
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The problem is, if true, they may now have greatly enlarged their delivery system if nuclear warheads are ever developed.
At least that's how it'll be argued.
their new delivery system for when the next world war starts.
just be posturing for the negotiations that we are starting with them. Who knows. BushCo. beat that drum so much that maybe they decided not to go the way of Iraq.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGNcoB2Y4I
has israel heard about this? jesus we cant have this , time for the zionists to snuff out the cock roaches eh!barrack?
The 'hawks' would have more credibility if they could answer the question of why certain countries or groups want to kill us without resorting to platitudes for morons like "They hate us for our freedoms"
They'd still be wrong but they'd have more credibility.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.5...
Everybody get launchin'!!
...a little global conflagration to fix the economic depression. Let the speeches (aka fear-mongering) begin!
there is already protectionist talk from some politicians. That is what created the Great Depression eventually leading to world war. Unfair trade BS. Here we go again.
USA
Russia
China
France
Britain
Australia
N.Korea
India
Both Taiwan and Israel could.
Brazil has a big enough economy.
Italy? Could probably do it. Germany, too.
I bet Turkey could, too...
What? Oh, yeah, we have always been at war with west asia...
I thought it was Oceania.
Add Google to your list of countries.
By the way, Google Earth 5.0 came out and ity is unbelievable. You can google oceans, google mars and the added satellite photos that go back 20 years, show changes over time.
"We have nothing to fear but ourselves."
or something like that
Installed, and already checked out some of the amazing stuff! Positive if you zoom in at just the right place on Mars, there is signs of life!!
might be OBL!!?
Osama Bin Laden is a layer in Google earth. Just click on the box that says "where's osama?", and it immediately zooms into his current location.
Like I said, it's amazing.
Just follow Osama Bin Laden on his Twitter account! Somebody email the White House about this!
Yea I just looked up vegas from 1950's. Almost nothing on the strip. The older photos are spotty but I think they are uploading more as we speak. Must be a huge task.
I'm sure they'll eventually use as many historical aerial photos as the can get their hands on and go back to the turn of the century in some places.
Who cares. This is something that most modern industrialized countries have gone through in the past fifty years. For God's sake, the USSR launched Sputnik in 1957. Of course space & weapons technology is generally much more advanced now, but the hubbub surrounding this is just a new stage in Cold War-style fearmongering for the hawks to use to scare us all into complicity in their further violence and war for their personal gain. If Obama acts all hakwish about this I hope that the American people will remain skeptical.
is that their space programme is in many ways dependent on Chinese tech, which is actually in part based on Israeli tech... which in part sorta-kinda stolen from us.
LOL...
A behind the scene look at the Iranian rocket launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5KKh4R70E
LMAO
And just yesterday i was thinking what a fucked up place this world is these days. Have you ever realized how much easier this world was when there was... well before now?
thank you
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thank you
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Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is in compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection requirements. Who has met neither of these standards? Israel, Pakistan, India.
And, further, Iran has not attacked another country in 250 years. Can any of our 'allies' or ourselves claim the same? And, yes, it was Iraq that attacked Iran, at our urging, with our nerve gas and chemical weapons.
... that the only NPT members with nuclear programs exempt from inspections are the Big Five - UK, France, China, Russia and the US. It's nothing like a game of nuclear Calvinball at all, in any way whatsover, no sireeh...
..any other country. They've helped Hezbollah and Hamas do it!
where the US has backed terrorists/freedom fighters, local warlords and outright despots:
Nicuaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Egypt, Saudi, Israel (Irgun), Morrocco, Tunisia, Congo, South Africa (Apartheid regime), Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Chile.
You were saying...
That $100 billion for Star Wars was money well spent!!
What? Doesn't work? Oh, never mind.
Uh, seems like a lack of evidence was what Joe Wilson was about, and look what happened to his wife.
Ah, well - at least the fascists have left town.
..anything that comes out of Iran. The old joke, how do you know he's lying? His lips are moving. That's how I treat anything that comes out of that weasel Alma-dinnerjacket.
The existence of a satellite being internationally tracked?
The American intelligence community and International Atomic Energy Agency's assertions that there's no evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program?
None of these things come from Ahmadinejhad.
Or maybe you just don't believe that McCain lost and so you can't collect on his "points make prizes" scheme for your current comments.
So what's Israel's ridiculous response to this? Iran is only developing a space program so that they can sprinkle anthrax on Israel from the stratosphere?
1. Nuclear power
2. Space flight
The US felt a lot of pride out of those accomplishments; it's very US-centric to assume that no one else should have the right to share that pride.
Cernig wrote:
That's correct. Here we have Obama and Clinton continuing and repeating the Bush-Cheney GWOT party line-- another example of US foreign policy being generally a bi-partisan affair. Cernig's assertion that a "lack of evidence" will be an impediment to war suggests several questions.
(1) Will US hawks, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, be forced to confront the lack of evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon?
(2) Who will be forcing these "savage mules" to confront this negative evidence? The Democratic Party? The GOP? Donald Rumsfeld? Santa Claus?
(3) When in US history has "lack of evidence" ever prevented the US Government from pursuing and executing a war it had already decided (against its own population's wishes) upon waging?
... but then when a "peace" president like Obama says in his inaugural speech:
...deliberately conflating the US War on Vietnam-- a straight-up imperial war of aggression on a peasant society sold to the American people through an endless pack of lies-- with the US War of Independence and the US Civil War and the Second World War?
Well, when you see and hear that, then there is no doubt you are inaugurating another "savage mule"-- a pro-empire, pro-war Democrat-- a JFK willing to order a Bay of Pigs operation-- no sweat. Laying Hellfire missiles on Afghan and Pakistani civilians? No sweat.
[irony] He's doing "for us". [/irony]
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