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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Satellite images, expert suggest Iranian space launch coming
2021-12-13
If you know what you’re looking at, dear Reader, the photo at the link will no doubt be interesting.
[IsraelTimes] Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....
appears to be preparing for a space launch, as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.

The likely blast-off at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian state media has offered a list of upcoming planned satellite launches in the works for the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s civilian space program, which has been beset by a series of failed launches. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard runs its own parallel program that successfully put a satellite into orbit last year.

Conducting a launch amid the Vienna talks fits the hardline posture struck by Tehran’s negotiators, who already described six previous rounds of diplomacy as a "draft," exasperating Western nations. Germany’s new foreign minister has gone as far as to warn that "time is running out for us at this point."

But all this fits into a renewed focus on space by Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who studies Tehran’s program. With Iran’s former president Hassan Rouhani
...Iran's moderate president, which he is, relative to his predecessor, which doesn't mean he's anything but a puppet of the nearest holy man...
, who shepherded the nuclear deal out of office, concerns about alienating the talks with launches that the US asserts aids Tehran’s ballistic missile program likely have faded.

"They’re not walking on eggshells," Lewis said. "I think Raisi’s people have a new balance in mind."
Posted by:trailing wife

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