ALMATY — An Iranian satellite launched by
Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan Tuesday and reached orbit amid controversy
that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in
Ukraine.
اضافة اعلان
As Russia’s international isolation grows following
Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the
Kremlin is seeking to pivot
Russia towards the Middle East, Asia, and Africa and find new clients for the
country’s embattled space program.
Speaking at the Moscow-controlled Baikonur
cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, Russian space chief Yury Borisov hailed “an
important milestone in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation, opening the way
to the implementation of new and even larger projects”.
Iran’s Telecommunications Minister
Issa Zarepour,
who also attended the launch of the Khayyam satellite, called the event
“historic” and “a turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field
of space between our two countries”.
Nasser Kanani, the Iranian foreign ministry
spokesman, said on Twitter that “the brilliant path of scientific and
technological progress of the Islamic republic of Iran continues despite
sanctions and the enemies’ maximum pressure.”
Iran, which has maintained ties with Moscow and
refrained from criticism of the Ukraine invasion, has sought to deflect
suspicions that Moscow could use Khayyam to spy on Ukraine.
Last week, The Washington Post quoted anonymous
Western intelligence officials as saying that Russia “plans to use the
satellite for several months or longer” to assist its war efforts before
allowing Iran to take control.
Less than two hours after the satellite was launched
on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, the Iran Space Agency (ISA) said “ground stations of
the Iran Space Agency” had already received “first telemetric data”.
The space agency stressed on Sunday that the Islamic
republic would control the satellite “from day one” in an apparent reaction to
the Post’s report.
“No third country is able to access the information”
sent by the satellite due to its “encrypted algorithm”, it said.
The purpose of Khayyam is to “monitor the country’s
borders”, enhance agricultural productivity, and monitor water resources and
natural disasters, according to the space agency.
‘Long-term cooperation’
Khayyam, apparently named
after the 11th-century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, will not be the first
Iranian satellite that Russia has put into space.
In 2005,
Iran’s Sina-1 satellite was deployed from
Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin met Iranian
counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran
last month — one of his few trips abroad since Moscow’s February 24 invasion.
Iran’s Khamenei called for “long-term cooperation”
with Russia during their meeting, and Tehran has refused to join international
condemnation of Moscow’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbor.
Iran insists its space program is for civilian and
defense purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal, or any other
international agreement.
Western governments worry that satellite launch
systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic
missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always
denied wanting to build.
Iran successfully put its first military satellite
into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the US.
On the eve of the Khayyam launch, ISA praised “the
high reliability factor of the Soyuz launcher”.
Russia will continue its space program but end
activities at the International Space Station — an outlier of cooperation
between Moscow and the West — after 2024, he said.
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