TEHRAN: Iran plans to launch a telecommunications satellite, the president said yesterday, using missile technology the West fears is being developed to fire nuclear warheads.
Iran said last Sunday it had put a dummy satellite into orbit on a domestically made rocket for the first time, although US officials said the attempted launch was a failure.
“Today, the Iranian nation has obtained the technology to produce different kinds of satellites and with God’s help it will launch its first telecommunications ... satellite into space,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the central Iranian city of Arak carried live on state television.
He did not give a timetable in the remarks. Iran’s top aerospace official said on Thursday the country aimed to send a manned rocket into space in the next 10 years.
