Iran has launched three domestically developed satellites into space on Sunday from a Russian launch site, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his way to meet US President Donald Trump to discuss the Iranian threat, along with other regional issues.
Israeli officials have interpreted the launches, which were announced multiple times in advance, as a show of the Islamic Republic’s defiance of attempts by Jerusalem and Washington to impose a new balance of power on it following the war between the parties this past June.
Prior to the June war, Tehran had managed numerous satellite launches in recent years, some on its own, and some in conjunction with Moscow.
During that period of time, such satellite launches were often viewed by Israel and by America as a grave danger, due to their being a potential dual-use threat and a move toward producing nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which might eventually reach the US.
However, following the June war, Iran’s nuclear program is in shambles, and it has not made any serious progress in the last half-year toward rehabilitating the program.
This leaves the significance of the latest satellite launches as more of an open question.
There are still three ways, though, that the latest launches could be threatening to Israel and the US.
The first would be that even if other aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are currently destroyed or frozen, progress for ICBM technology would mean that if the Islamic Republic were to return to making progress in other areas, this aspect of the program might be more advanced and ready.
Second, Iran attacked Israel with three massive barrages of ballistic missiles between April 2024 and June of this year, raising awareness of the extent of its conventional missile threat separate from the nuclear threat.
If it improves its ICBM capabilities, this mass conventional ballistic missile threat may eventually pose as direct a threat to Washington and Western Europe as it already does to Jerusalem, the Saudis, and Eastern Europe.
Third, some satellites are used for surveillance, and along with Russia, Iran may significantly up its game in being able to spy on Israel and on Israeli military units.
A major advantage that Israel had over Iran in the recent war was intelligence from its surveillance satellites.
More danger and vulnerability for Israel
If Iran evens the score in that arena, any future conflict between the sides may be more even, which could mean far more danger and vulnerability for Israel.
VAHID YAZDANIAN, head of the Iranian Space Research Institute and a Deputy Communications and Information Technology Minister, has said the three satellites – Paya (Tolu-3), Zafar-2, and the second prototype of Kowsar-1.5 – have been built by the private sector.
They were integrated with Russia’s Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle at the Vostochny Spaceport as part of a multi-payload mission, which marked the seventh time Iran used Russian rockets for satellite deployment.
At a weight of 150 kilograms, Iran said Tolu-3 was the heaviest and most advanced observation satellite Tehran has launched to date.
Reportedly, it delivers imagery with a resolution of around five meters in black and white and 10 meters in color.
The satellites were scheduled to be placed into low Earth orbit using a Russian launch vehicle, according to reports
They are expected to transmit imaging data with spatial resolutions ranging from 15 meters to less than five meters.
Yazdanian has said the satellites will join the fleet of domestically produced satellites that Iran already has in orbit.
Unlike some previous models, the new satellites will operate at an altitude of about 500 kilometers above Earth, known as low Earth orbit (LEO).
According to Iranian media, this past July, Iran’s Nahid-2 satellite was lifted into space by Russia to bolster the country’s navigation and telecommunications systems.
In September 2024, Iran launched a satellite into space with a rocket built by the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), state-run media reported at the time.
Iran described the launch as the second comparable launch to place a satellite into orbit with the rocket.
At the time, Tehran identified the satellite-carrying rocket as the Qaem-100, which the IRGC
used in January for another successful launch.
The solid-fuel, three-stage rocket put the Chamran-1 satellite, weighing 60 kilograms (132 pounds), into a 550-kilometer (340-mile) orbit, state media reported.
THE US intelligence community’s 2024 worldwide threat assessment warned that Iran’s development of satellite launch vehicles “would shorten the timeline” for it to develop an ICBM.
In 2022, a Russian rocket carrying an Iranian satellite successfully launched into space, causing
national security and intelligence concerns for Israel and the West.
The remote sensing satellite, called “Khayyam,” was launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the home of Russian space launches located in southern Kazakhstan, according to a video broadcast by Russia’s Roscosmos space agency on YouTube.
Israeli officials were concerned that the latest space cooperation between Moscow and Tehran would increase Iran’s capabilities to potentially launch ICBMs as well as improve its monitoring of targets in the Jewish state and throughout the region in the short term.
An additional concern for Jerusalem could be this and future Russian-Iranian satellites reducing Israeli spies’ ability to penetrate the Islamic Republic’s border with operations that hold back its nuclear progress.
Earlier in 2022, The Washington Post reported that Russia was preparing to provide Iran with an advanced satellite that would enable it to track potential military targets across the Middle East, sending shudders through much of the region
The Washington Post report had said that the new satellite would allow “continuous monitoring of facilities ranging from Persian Gulf oil refineries and Israeli military bases to Iraqi barracks that house US troops,” citing three unnamed sources - a current and a former US official and a senior Middle Eastern government official briefed on the sale.
The 2022 satellite report said it would feature Russian hardware, “including a camera with a resolution of 1.2 meters – a significant improvement over Iran’s current capabilities, though still far short of the quality achieved” by US or Israeli spy satellites.
Despite all of the above concerns, Israel Space Program chief and Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Ben Israel poured cold water on concerns in 2022, saying that it lacks any strategic significance.
To an average reader, a satellite that can get pictures within 1.2 meters from the ground sounds phenomenal.
However, he said that currently Iran and any other country can buy satellite photos from the commercial sector at a mere $10,000 per shot, which are three times better.
Reuters contributed to this report.