Iran’s Revolutionary Guards “efficiently” launched a brand new army imaging satellite tv for pc on Wednesday, state media reported, within the newest show of its aerospace expertise which has sparked Western concern.
“The Nour-3 imaging satellite tv for pc… was efficiently positioned in orbit 450 kilometres (280 miles) above earth,” the IRNA information company stated, quoting Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour.
He stated it was carried by the three-stage Qassed satellite tv for pc service, which additionally launched predecessors Nour-2 in 2022 and Nour-1 in 2020.
Wednesday’s launch was carried out by the aerospace wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the nation’s armed forces.
IRGC commander Hossein Salami advised state tv that the brand new satellite tv for pc would offer larger decision photographs than its predecessors enabling the Guards to “meet their intelligence wants.”
America has repeatedly warned Iran in opposition to such launches, saying the identical expertise can be utilized for ballistic missiles, together with ones designed to ship a nuclear warhead.
Different Western governments have voiced related considerations.
Iran counters that it isn’t searching for nuclear weapons and that its satellite tv for pc and rocket launches are for civil or protection functions solely.
It has struggled with a number of satellite tv for pc launch failures prior to now, and the profitable launch of its first army satellite tv for pc into orbit, Nour-1, in April 2020 drew a pointy rebuke from the US.
Tehran has been underneath crippling US sanctions since Washington’s 2018 withdrawal from a landmark nuclear deal which granted Iran sanctions reduction in return for curbs on its nuclear actions designed to stop it from growing an atomic warhead.
Iran has at all times denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons functionality, insisting that its actions are fully peaceable.
In a current interview with a Japanese information company, Overseas Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke of a Japanese proposal to relaunch Iran’s nuclear talks with america.
Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic ties because the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
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