Russia said providing Iran advanced spy satellite to surveil military targets
Title : Russia said providing Iran advanced spy satellite to surveil military targets
Link : Russia said providing Iran advanced spy satellite to surveil military targets
The report, citing three current and former US and Middle Eastern officials, said Russia will supply Iran with a Russian-made Kanopus-V satellite equipped with a high-resolution camera.
While technically a civilian satellite, it would give Iran the ability to continuously monitor sites ranging from Israeli army facilities to US military bases to Saudi oil refineries, the officials said.
Iran has stepped up its attempts at a satellite program in recent years. In April 2020 Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched their first satellite into space, dramatically revealing what experts described as a secret military space program.
However, Pentagon officials derided the “Noor” satellite as little more than a “rotating webcam” and Israel’s Foreign Ministry described the launch as a “façade for Iran’s continuous development of advanced missile technology.”
But it appears Iran’s military is also actively pursuing advanced surveillance capabilities.
The Washington Post said that senior Revolutionary Guards officials have made multiple trips to Russia since 2018 to help negotiate the terms of the agreement to purchase the satellite, while Russian experts were in Iran to help train ground crews that would operate the satellite from a newly built facility near the northern city of Karaj.
The Guard, which operates its own military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces, is a hardline force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The satellite would be supplied in the next few months and be launched by Russia, the report said, noting that Russia declined to comment.
A Middle Eastern official told the Post that the Kanopus-V 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 spy satellites or high-end commercial satellite imagery providers.
Iran would be able to “task” the new satellite to spy on locations of its choosing, and as often as it wished, the officials said.
“It’s not the best in the world, but it’s high-resolution and very good for military aims,” the Middle Eastern official told the Post. “This capability will allow Iran to maintain an accurate target bank, and to update that target bank within a few hours” every day. READ MORE
Russia said providing Iran advanced spy satellite to surveil military targets
Russia said providing Iran advanced spy satellite to surveil military targets
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