Iran’s Biological Orbital Launch Demonstrates New Military Capabilities

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The BBC is reporting that Iran has launched a rocket into Earth orbit with an “experimental capsule” containing “a rat, turtles and worms.”  The launch follows pronouncements earlier this week from Iranian President Ahmadinejad that the Islamic Republican would deliver a blow to “global arrogance” on February 11, though what that blow is remains to be seen.

Whatever Ahmadinejad has planned, however, he will have a hard time topping the apparently unacknowledged subtext of today’s launch, particularly if the Iranians manage a successful recovery of their rocket’s animal cargo. 

When Apollo 11 touched down on the surface of the moon the astronauts who trod the lunar surface left a plaque there bearing the date and their names as well as the inscription “We came in peace for all mankind.”  NASA’s noble intentions not withstanding, however, the view from the Kremlin was a little different.  The technology that allowed Americans to land men on the surface of the moon would also more than enable them to land a 250 kiloton warhead on Moscow and so do with a phenominal degree of accuracy.  Implicit in the Col War space programs was a threat: if we can hit the moon we can hit you.

Though the dark days of Cold War brinksmanship are long behind us, the United States would be foolish to forget the military lessons learned during the space race.  The same technology that allows the Iranians to put a payload into orbit gives them the capacity to deliver that payload to any location on Earth.  A rocket that can reach Earth orbit is also a missile with intercontinental range.

Likewise, a capsule in which some small animals can survive a journey into space is also a capsule in which a weaponized virus or a chemical weapon can be kept stable en-route to a distant target.  Iran’s peaceful launch today thus demonstrates the capability to deliver a chemical or biological weapon – weapons the Iranian regime is presumed to possess – to the other side of the world.

Should Iran wish to turn this technology towards these more bellicose ends they will have much work still before them.  Recovery, accuracy, munitions dispersal, and a host of other technical issues may well stand between Iran and a functioning intercontinental range biological or chemical weapon.  That said, the regime has apparently cleared the most significant hurdles.

To that end the United States, among other Western powers, would do well to take notice of today’s launch.  Iran is an ascendant power and one that will not long be relegated to regional status regardless of its political hostility towards the established world order.  The time is coming when Iran will demand to be welcomed to the international bargaining table as an equal and today’s launch suggests that day is closer than many Americans might like to believe.