TEHRAN —
Iran announced Tuesday it had successfully
placed a military satellite in orbit, as talks on reviving a 2015 nuclear deal
between Tehran and major powers reach a critical stage.
اضافة اعلان
“Iran’s second military satellite — named
Nour-2 — has been launched into space by the Qassed rocket of the aerospace
wing of the Revolutionary Guards and successfully placed in orbit 500km above
the Earth,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
The
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described the Nour-2 as a “reconnaissance satellite” in a statement on its
Sepah News website.
It said the satellite was launched from the
Shahroud desert in Semnan province, some 300km east of the capital.
Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour
hailed the successful launch.
“The first signals from Nour-2 have been
successfully received by ground stations,” he said in statement on IRNA.
“This reconnaissance satellite will orbit the
Earth every 90 minutes, and its mission will last at least three years.”
The US has repeatedly voiced concern that
such launches could boost Iran’s ballistic missile technology.
But Iran insists it is not seeking nuclear
weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defensive
purposes only.
Iran successfully put its first military
satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from Washington.
Sepah News said Tuesday that the Nour-1 was “still
fully operational and transmitting data”.
At the end of December, Iran announced it had
failed to put into orbit “three research cargos” carried by Simorgh (Phoenix)
satellite carrier as the rocket was unable to reach the required speed.
In January, Iran tested a solid-fuel rocket
for its satellite program, state media reported.
Nuclear
talks
Major
powers involved in talks on bringing
Washington back into the Iran nuclear deal
after then-president Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal have said that an agreement
is close.
Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said
Saturday they had agreed to an approach for resolving key outstanding issues
but new Russian demands stemming from the
Ukraine conflict may delay a deal.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said
Saturday that before it backs a revived deal, Moscow wants written assurances
from Washington that Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war will not
affect its economic and military cooperation with Tehran.
The following day, US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken said such demands were “irrelevant”. Sanctions on Russia over
its invasion of Ukraine “have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal”, he
said.
The Russian demands have cast doubts on
whether negotiations in
Vienna, which have reached critical stages, could be
concluded swiftly.
As with the original agreement,
Moscow is
expected to play a key role in the implementation of any fresh deal with
Tehran, for example by receiving shipments of enriched uranium from Iran.
Formally known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on
its nuclear activities to guarantee it could not develop a weapons capability —
an ambition it has staunchly denied.
But Washington’s withdrawal from the accord and its
re-imposition of biting economic sanctions prompted Tehran to begin rolling
back on its own commitments.
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