(Tehran) Tehran assured on Sunday that it would control “from day one” a satellite that Russia will put into orbit for it on Tuesday, after the American press assured that the device would first be used by Moscow in its war in Ukraine.
Posted at 10:34 a.m.
The “Khayyam” remote sensing satellite ordered by the Islamic Republic is to be launched on August 9 from the (Russian) Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) said last Wednesday.
“All orders related to the control and operation of this satellite will be issued from the first day and immediately after the launch by Iranian experts based in the Iranian Ministry of Communications,” the Iranian Space Agency said in a statement on Sunday.
Thursday, the American daily The Washington Post assured that Russia “plans to use the satellite for several months” in its war in Ukraine before then ceding control to Iran.
Citing unnamed Western intelligence sources, the paper also claims the satellite will provide Iran with “unprecedented capabilities, including near-uninterrupted surveillance of sensitive infrastructure in Israel and the Gulf”, but only after Moscow will have used to “increase its surveillance of military objectives” in the conflict in Ukraine.
“False” allegations according to the Iranian Space Agency, which claims “no third country can access the data” sent by the satellite via an “encryption algorithm”.
This satellite, named in honor of the Persian poet and scholar Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), aims in particular to “monitor the borders of the country”, improve agricultural productivity, control water resources and natural disasters. , according to the Iranian space agency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met his counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran on July 19.
In June 2021, the Russian president had refuted information from the washington post claiming that Moscow was preparing to provide a sophisticated satellite to Iran to improve its spy capabilities.
For the United States, the Iranian space program is intended for more military than commercial purposes, while Tehran maintains that its aerospace activities are peaceful and in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions.
The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, announced in March the launch of a new military reconnaissance satellite called Nour-2, after the launch of the first, Nour-1, in April 2020.