"Um, Vlade, Can We Talk...?"
Russia’s pell-mell drive to lift Iran to regional superpower status continues unabated:
Russia plans to launch later this year Iran’s first two satellites which were built to gather intelligence from space, the business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has signed a directive permitting the Russian defense ministry to launch the two satellites, named Mesbah and Sinah-1, from the Plesetsk launch site in the far north of the country, the daily said.
As if giving Tehran all the ingredients for making nuclear weapons wasn’t bad enough.
But not to worry, Moscow assures us:
Kommersant said the two Iranian satellites were due to be launched between April and June of this year and said they were designed for “distant examination of the earth’s surface,” a term the daily said was the common idiom for intelligence gathering.
A government spokesman contacted by AFP was unable to confirm the purpose of the Iranian satellites and the Fradkov directive described them only as built for “scientific purposes.”
Heh. Who says Russkies don’t have a sense of humor?
But while the Moscow military mercantile mercenaries are guffawing in private (or, more likely, counting their money - $132 million smackers for this deal alone), we have to be concerned about the major upgrade in Iran’s military and terrorist capabilities these satellites will provide. Even bolstering Tehran’s telecommunications infrastructure by handling data, audio and video signals – meaning securing them from U.S. intelligence eavesdropping – will make its terrorist operations much more effective and equally less vulnerable to disruption.
Put this in the context of the mullahs’ grab for nuclear weapons capability, and a truly nightmarish scenario takes shape.
Is President Putin just out to make a buck (the new Plesetsk space launch site is also putting up satellites for Red China {*AHEM*}, Britain, Norway, Germany, Japan and the European Space Agency), or is there a more pointed reason why he persists in arming a self-declared enemy of the United States?
The next time President Bush meets with ol’ Vlade, he needs to do less peering into his soul, and more grabbing him by the lapels.
[Hat tip: GOP Bloggers]
Russia plans to launch later this year Iran’s first two satellites which were built to gather intelligence from space, the business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has signed a directive permitting the Russian defense ministry to launch the two satellites, named Mesbah and Sinah-1, from the Plesetsk launch site in the far north of the country, the daily said.
As if giving Tehran all the ingredients for making nuclear weapons wasn’t bad enough.
But not to worry, Moscow assures us:
Kommersant said the two Iranian satellites were due to be launched between April and June of this year and said they were designed for “distant examination of the earth’s surface,” a term the daily said was the common idiom for intelligence gathering.
A government spokesman contacted by AFP was unable to confirm the purpose of the Iranian satellites and the Fradkov directive described them only as built for “scientific purposes.”
Heh. Who says Russkies don’t have a sense of humor?
But while the Moscow military mercantile mercenaries are guffawing in private (or, more likely, counting their money - $132 million smackers for this deal alone), we have to be concerned about the major upgrade in Iran’s military and terrorist capabilities these satellites will provide. Even bolstering Tehran’s telecommunications infrastructure by handling data, audio and video signals – meaning securing them from U.S. intelligence eavesdropping – will make its terrorist operations much more effective and equally less vulnerable to disruption.
Put this in the context of the mullahs’ grab for nuclear weapons capability, and a truly nightmarish scenario takes shape.
Is President Putin just out to make a buck (the new Plesetsk space launch site is also putting up satellites for Red China {*AHEM*}, Britain, Norway, Germany, Japan and the European Space Agency), or is there a more pointed reason why he persists in arming a self-declared enemy of the United States?
The next time President Bush meets with ol’ Vlade, he needs to do less peering into his soul, and more grabbing him by the lapels.
[Hat tip: GOP Bloggers]
posted by JASmius at 10:59 AM
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