Iran successfully launched its Nur satellite into orbit on Wednesday.
While the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims that the Nur is a military satellite designed solely to monitor military targets, that’s just a cover story. This was actually a successful satellite launch serving the purpose of a successful ballistic missile test. It was designed to advance Iran’s understanding of orbital dynamics and its development of a functioning intercontinental ballistic missile program.
The Guard has long sought a weapons system that would allow Iran to threaten the U.S. mainland. This goal has been disrupted by U.S. and Israeli intelligence service efforts, but Iran’s ballistic missile program is still making progress. If Iran’s claims are to be believed, and in this case, they should be, the Nur is orbiting at an altitude of 425 kilometers. That’s between the apogee of a medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Nur is the largest satellite Iran has ever launched to this altitude, so the project is surely producing a wealth of new data from which Iranian scientists will learn.
In specific terms, the Nur’s success will allow Iran to take precise measurements on the fuel-to-thrust ratio as applied to the satellite payload weight. That allows Iranian scientists to fine-tune the engine and guidance systems to the end of launching an ICBM much farther — across the Atlantic Ocean, for example. And Iran has already experimented with reentry vehicles on previous launches.
In essence, what we’re seeing here is what we saw from North Korea in its 2016 KMS-4 satellite launch. That satellite was launched to an altitude very similar to the Nur, and it allowed North Korea to improve its ballistic missile systems for the launches that occurred in 2017.
Iran will not reach that capability within one year or likely even five. Still, considering that the Iranian regime believes it is on an ordained mission to dominate the Middle East, its success here will not go unnoticed by its regional nemesis, Saudi Arabia. In turn, if we wish to prevent a nuclear arms race in an already unstable part of the world, we should be concerned about addressing Iran’s activity.
