Iran’s long-awaited space launch center at Chabahar, first announced in 2010,^[1] is finally nearing an initial operating capability. Despite a flurry of statements by officials in recent years suggesting that the facility was moving ahead, its construction and precise location were not independently confirmed until May 2024, when researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies identified the site in satellite imagery.^[2] Chabahar will be Iran’s third space launch base, in addition to the Imam Khomeini Spaceport near Semnan, used by the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), and the Shahroud space center run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Chabahar spaceport’s ability to launch larger rockets than the two existing facilities will enable Iran to take the next steps toward its stated space ambitions. Formidable technical challenges remain, however. And although the West has long been concerned by Iran’s development of rockets for space launches as potential test beds for intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technologies, the satellites those rockets carry may eventually prove equally valuable as military assets, insofar as they could increase the potency of Iran’s missiles and drones through enhanced targeting, navigation, and communication capabilities.

In February 2024, Iranian Space Agency chief Hassan Salarieh showed an image of a building under construction at Chabahar. Credit: President.ir

Iran’s Goals in Space

Iranian leaders have major space ambitions. They have at turns discussed plans to place in orbit a constellation of remote sensing satellites;^[3] a system of navigation satellites similar to the Global Positioning System (GPS);^[4] a flock of small communications satellites akin to the SpaceX-owned Starlink system;^[5] and larger, traditional telecommunications satellites.^[6] They have also spoken of sending an astronaut to space within the next five years.^[7]

Officials say they seek access to these technologies for their economic, environmental, humanitarian, scientific—and military—benefits.^[8] Satellites are inherently dual use: a remote sensing satellite could be used to monitor crop performance or to monitor the movements of an adversary’s armed forces; navigation satellites could help citizens as they drive to the supermarket or could guide military aircraft, missiles, and drones; communications satellites could beam television channels or serve as a data link between an aerial drone and its pilot hundreds of miles away.

But the challenges for Iran to achieve a mature space program are steep. First, its scientists and engineers will need to develop satellites with capabilities adequate for their intended purposes. For remote sensing satellites, for example, a key challenge is building the high-resolution sensors that capture detailed images of the Earth below. Press reports have speculated that Iran’s Noor-3 satellite, launched in 2023, may have a spatial resolution of approximately five meters.^[9] In a five-meter-resolution image, each pixel represents a ground area five meters long and five meters wide. Such a resolution could be useful for tracking the size of bodies of water or vegetation density but would not enable a user to monitor the movement of vehicles or livestock, and would be correspondingly limited in its utility for military targeting. Iran’s highest-resolution satellite, Khayyam, built by a Russian company, has a resolution of about one meter, and the ISA is working to domestically produce a satellite with an equivalent resolution in the next few years.^[10] By comparison, commercial providers in the United States offer imagery with resolutions as high as 30 cm.^[11]

Second, Iran will need more powerful space launch vehicles (SLVs), the rockets that boost satellites into orbit, than it currently possesses. The most powerful Iranian SLV developed to date, the Simorgh, is nominally capable of placing a payload of 250 kilograms into low-earth orbit (LEO) with an altitude of around 1,000 kilometers or less.^[12] To put larger payloads into LEO, or to reach the nearly 36,000-kilometer geostationary orbit required for a communications satellite, will require a much more capable rocket.

Iran is working on these, albeit slowly. The Sarir, an SLV under development by Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO), will have better performance compared to the Simorgh but use the same first stage, limiting its overall potential.^[13] The Soroush rockets that follow the Sarir will be the first ones capable of placing a full-scale payload into geostationary orbit.^[14] Separately, the IRGC plans to build larger Ghaem-series rockets to reach geostationary orbits.^[15] But these SLVs are all likely years away. The Simorgh was first unveiled in 2010 but did not successfully place a satellite in orbit until 2024, illustrating just how long the development of an SLV can take.

Iran could seek help from another country, particularly Russia or China, to purchase satellites, collaborate on the development of satellites and SLVs, and more. There is already a strong basis for Russian assistance, as Russia built and launched the Khayyam imaging satellite for Iran in 2022.^[16] The two countries signed an agreement to further strengthen cooperation in the space industry later that year.^[17] Similarly, the Washington Post recently reported that the IRGC is seeking partnerships with two Chinese companies to acquire remote-sensing satellites with more powerful cameras than the Khayyam.^[18] Such collaboration could drastically shorten the timelines required for Iran to achieve its goals in space.

A graphic showing the relative sizes of Iranian space launch vehicles developed by the Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Soroush SLV under development by the AIO is omitted from this graphic due to limited open-source information about it and because its large size would distort the scale. Credit: Wisconsin Project

Chabahar’s Role and Advantages

Presuming Iran can develop or acquire the needed satellites and SLVs, however, its existing facilities are inadequate for launching them. The Soroush family of rockets, in particular, will be too big to launch from the space center at Semnan or the IRGC base at Shahroud, at least as they are currently configured. Large SLVs must be assembled on the launch pad with the help of a service tower or gantry, and Soroush will not fit within the service tower at Semnan. Moreover, rockets that make use of cryogenic propellants—as Iran’s Soroush-2 will reportedly use^[19]—require specialized facilities for storing the propellant at extremely low temperatures, which neither existing space center has.

That is where the Chabahar spaceport comes in. According to Iranian officials, once it is completed Chabahar will be able to accommodate “super-heavy” liquid-fueled rockets,^[20] and there have been hints that it will have cryogenic fuel tanks on site.^[21] Chabahar also offers other advantages over both Semnan and Shahroud that make it easier to put large payloads into orbit. First, it is in the south of the country, situated at about 25 degrees north latitude—further south even than the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launches from Chabahar can also be oriented almost directly eastward without crossing populated areas. Launching eastward from close to the equator allows rockets to take optimal advantage of the Earth’s rotational speed and minimize the amount of energy needed to place a given payload into certain orbits.

Another notable, though indirect, advantage is the space center’s proximity to a deep-water port, with easy access to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Iranian leaders hope that Chabahar’s central location and favorable characteristics will make it a cost-competitive option for other countries in the region to use for launching their own payloads into orbit.^[22]

The Military Concerns

While rockets may attract the most attention, the big SLVs that the Iranian Space Agency is planning to use at Chabahar are unlikely to pose direct military risks. Independent analysts have cautioned for years that cumbersome, liquid-fuel rockets such as the Simorgh would not make suitable weapons.^[23] Those encumbrances are even more pronounced for the Sarir and Soroush models: they will need to be erected with a crane on a fixed launch pad and pumped with tens of thousands of liters of fuel and oxidizer before taking off; they will require extensive support equipment and personnel to prepare; and all of this activity will be easy to detect over the days or even weeks leading up to a launch.^[24]

Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran’s SLV development activities shorten the timeline to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) if Iran chooses to build one. This assessment may apply particularly to the Ghaem-series solid-fuel SLVs that the IRGC is building. Unlike liquid-fuel rockets, solid-fuel rockets come with their fuel literally baked in, allowing for much shorter launch preparation times. Moreover, the Ghaem-100 need not be assembled on the pad; it can be transported and launched from a mobile launcher, similar to a ballistic missile. Even in the case of Iran’s liquid-fuel SLVs, work on rocket engines, airframes, stage and payload separation, guidance, and other activities could have utility for future missile designs.

Additionally, the possibility of Iran seeking foreign help for building its next generation of SLVs could have implications for the country’s long range missile development. In July 2023, CIA director William Burns said that he had seen evidence of Russian technicians working on Iran’s SLV program. There may be other countries which would be wary of assisting Iran’s missile program directly but might be willing to collaborate when it comes to space. Technology transfer or technical assistance to Iran’s space program could ultimately benefit its development of missiles.

Eventually, however, Iran’s satellites may do as much to enhance the lethality of its missiles and drones as its development of the rockets that launch them. Once Iran has a constellation of high-resolution remote sensing satellites in orbit, they could be used for reconnaissance and targeting. The ability to repeatedly image an area with high resolution would improve Iran’s missile accuracy since, regardless of a missile’s own precision in flight, hitting a target first requires detecting it and knowing precisely where it is. While Iran apparently already has some access to high-resolution satellite images (it has reportedly purchased them from commercial providers in the past),^[25] having its own satellite network will mean a greater coverage area, more frequent revisits, and greater flexibility in which locations it can surveil.

A communications satellite, too, will offer military advantages. For example, a key limitation for Iranian drones such as such as the Shahed-129 and the Mohajer-6 is that they rely on radio communications for operator control, limiting their practical range to around 200 kilometers.^[26] A satellite data link would enable the drones to travel further distances from their operators. Moreover, their communications could be more difficult to disrupt compared to ground-based radio signals. Although Iran is already seeking access to a communications satellite from international providers,^[27] having its own would offer additional layers of access, flexibility, and security.

None of this will happen overnight, however. In 2013, an ISA official predicted that Chabahar’s first phase would be operational by 2016.^[28] More than a decade later, it is still under construction. Although the first phase may be completed by March 2025, this will only allow for the launch of smaller, solid-fuel SLVs; later phases, which will enable the launch of the crucial liquid-fuel rockets carrying heavier payloads to farther orbits, are still likely years away from completion.^[29] And unless Iran receives outside help, the launch center may prove the easiest of the challenges Iran’s space program needs to surmount.