POMPEO WARNS IRAN'S SPACE PROGRAM IS 'DANGEROUS'

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POMPEO WARNS IRAN'S SPACE PROGRAM IS 'DANGEROUS'

The space general said the satellite is “unlikely” giving Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) any meaningful intelligence.

The paramilitary force said it used a "Qased," or “Messenger,” satellite carrier to put the device into space, a previously unheard-of system. It described the system as using both liquid and solid fuel.

Senior U.S. officials have long warned the same technology used to put a satellite into space is also used to make long-range missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

While Iran isn’t known to have the know-how to miniaturize a nuclear weapon for a ballistic missile, any advances toward an intercontinental ballistic missile would put Europe and potentially the U.S. in range. Iran long has said it limits its ballistic missiles' range to 1,240 miles under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's orders, which puts the Mideast but not the West in its reach.

Their secret space program advances technologies used in nuclear weapons delivery systems,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in a tweet Saturday.

A U.N. resolution tied to the landmark nuclear agreement says that Iran is “called upon” not to launch ballistic missiles which could be “DESIGNED to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

Today, the world’s powerful armies do not have a comprehensive defense plan without being in space, and achieving this superior technology that takes us into space and expands the realm of our abilities is a strategic achievement,” said Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard.

The Guard, which operates its own military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces, is a hard-line force answering only to Khamenei. Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.