BEIRUT — Iran's first successful satellite launch was greeted with official celebration in Tehran on Tuesday but with alarm in the West, where it stoked concerns about the Islamic Republic's increased mastery of missile technology that could be used for military purposes.
Iran said the two-stage-rocket launch was meant for peaceful scientific purposes. But officials in Washington, long concerned about Iran's nuclear program and regional ambitions, warned that its entry into the Space Age was an ominous development.
The satellite, called Omid, or "hope," was apparently launched into orbit late Monday or early Tuesday using an Iranian-made Safir-2 carrier rocket, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday.
State TV showed fire erupting from the rocket as it rose against a pitch-black sky. The launch placed Iran among elite company, with only nine other nations and a European consortium having put satellites into orbit.
"Your children have sent Iran's first domestic satellite into orbit," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, according to the website of the state-owned English-language Press TV news channel. "Iran's official presence in space has been added to the pages of history."
But the launch, confirmed by a Pentagon official and by physicists at several websites, also showed Iran's ability to defy U.S. and international sanctions aimed at denying it technologies with both military and civilian applications.
"This action does not convince us that Iran is acting responsibly to advance stability or security in the region," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Iran and the West are at odds over Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S., Israel and others suspect is ultimately meant to produce weapons and which Tehran contends is for peaceful civilian purposes only.
Iran's drive to master the production of potentially dual-use nuclear fuel has been accompanied by an effort to improve the range and accuracy of its rockets.
Since Sputnik, space programs have served as a way to test and showcase missile range and power as well as test the limits of science, a fact American officials highlighted in their public comments.
"The technology that is used to get this satellite into orbit . . . is one that could also be used to propel long-range ballistic missiles," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters in Washington.
