Iranian state-run television announced on Monday that Iran has joined the list of nations that possess the technology to build satellites and launch rockets into space.

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated what Iranian state television called Iran’s first major space center before he gave the order to launch the Explorer-1 rocket. Ahmadinejad utilized this inauguration ceremony to unveil Omid, Iran’s first domestically built satellite. The Omid satellite is expected to be launched into space this June, according to the Iranian defense minister. The Explorer-1 research rocket is part of the preparations for this satellite launch.

“We need to have an active and influential presence in space,” Ahmadinejad said at the inauguration ceremony. Iran put its first commercial satellite into space back in 2005, launched from a Russian rocket. Iran hopes to soon be able to launch satellites independent of Russia or any other nation. It plans to launch four satellites by 2010.

Iran claims that the purpose for its satellite project is to increase its ability to monitor natural disasters, to improve its telecommunications, and to enhance its security systems.

However, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack points out: “It is just another troubling development, in that the kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for a long-range ballistic missile.”

The concern is that Iran could use this technology to launch long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads. Iran already claims to have developed a ballistic missile with a 1,200-mile range. A missile with a 1,200-mile range could reach all the way into Europe.

This fact will not likely be missed by Europe. Back in October 2006, Ahmadinejad said in a nationally broadcast speech, “We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. … We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt.”

Don’t expect Europe to take such threats lying down. The pushy foreign policy of a militaristic, terrorist-sponsoring Iran will prove to be an effective catalyst for a united Europe to take action.

For more information on Iran’s military ambitions, read “Nuclear Iran Means Nuclear War.”