Iran's satellite dreams by Eskandar Sadeghi (guardian.co.uk)

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Iran's satellite dreams

Alarm over the launch of Omid should be seen in the context of Iran's often-tortured relationship with western modernity

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• • Eskandar Sadeghi
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009 11.30 GMT
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Iran is in the headlines again and as usual the coverage is for the most part negative and suspicious of the ambitions of the controversial Islamic Republic. Why? This week Iran launched a domestically made satellite called Omid (Hope) into space, and unsurprisingly alarm bells immediately began to sound throughout western capitals.

We witnessed similar accusations and fearful western headlines when Iran performed a series of missile tests, which included the Iranian made Shahab-3, in July 2008. The photo of the missile launch, initially paraded on a revolutionary guard affiliated website, was quickly impugned by experts as doctored, a desperate attempt to mask the launch's partial failure. Here, as is so often the case with Iranian politics, one comes up against the dichotomy of public symbols and bravado and private and carefully sheltered realities.

Though it is undoubtedly wise to approach this latest announcement with caution, since whether Omid has a purpose beyond "gathering information" and "testing equipment", and how else the satellite may be employed, remains unclear. Needless to say, its successful launch was been greeted with a large dose of triumphalism by Iran's hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. News sites such as Tabnak, said to be affiliated to the revolutionary guard and former high-ranking staff, such as the secretary of the expediency council Mohsen Rezaei, have been similarly unequivocal in their celebratory tone.

But we should hold back from assuming that "all roads" lead to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme, for which there is scant, if any evidence. The US national intelligence estimate of December 2007, but also the many pronouncements of IAEA boss, Mohammed El-Baradei, flatly contradict the sensationalist fearmongering propagated by the previous US administration.

As with every government, one needs to separate the wheat from the chaff, the rhetoric from calculations of realpolitik, and come to terms with the reality that Iran is just as preoccupied as any other nation with the promotion and safeguard of its own national interests. Until western policymakers come to terms with this reality, they're destined to repeat the past and perpetuate the ongoing "dialogue of the deaf".

On another note, the fact that Iran is the 11th country to launch a domestically produced satellite into orbit since the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957, is recited by rote by supporters of the regime and secular nationalists. Such a feat was simply unimaginable under the American-backed Pahlavi monarchy, which became technologically dependent on the US to the extent that to this very day Iran continues to feel the brunt of US sanctions on a myriad of technologies.

Ahmadinejad has been under a barrage of criticism as a result of his dismal performance on the domestic front, not to mention the rapidly deteriorating situation faced by Iranian human rights activists. His approach to foreign policy has similarly been accused of jeopardising Iran's national interests, due to his flippant and provocative fulminations against the west and Israel. But as is so often the case with Iran, we face a mosaic, not black-and-white; there is little doubt that anything which symbolises Iran's material and economic progress is vehemently supported by the public, and suspicions that Iran is being deprived of its "rightful" place on the world stage by foreign powers fiercely rebuffed.

Though the populist and religiously-coloured rhetoric of Iran's controversial president ought not to be simply brushed aside, one also needs to pay heed to the various continuities which abound from the early days of the Pahlavi monarchy and the eventual establishment of the Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters. The west should come to terms with how Iranians both view themselves and the place of their nation in world history, an ancient civilization of 2,500 years to which they believe themselves heirs. It is in this light that we see Iran's leaders endeavour to emulate western technological innovation while claiming it an unparalleled "victory for the Iranian nation".

This superiority/inferiority complex detailed recently by veteran journalist Hooman Majd in his book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, is hardly a new phenomenon and has a long history in Iran's often tortured relationship with western modernity, which entered the Iranian consciousness in the wake of British, Russian and finally American colonialism during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Without falling foul of cultural stereotypes, it's perhaps helpful to analyse Iran's behaviour by paying a modicum of attention to Iran's own cultural dynamics and peculiar love-hate relationship with the west, which encompasses both admiration and resentment, and is part of a longstanding struggle on the part of Iranians to find their place in the modern world.