The Tehran Times announced that Iran successfully launched its first domestically produced satellite into orbit yesterday.   Initially, the Iranians forgot to mention one small, little, tiny detail….  it’s a DUMMY satellite:

Iran corrected earlier reports it made Sunday and said that it had launched a dummy satellite into orbit.

At first, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that the Iranian-made communications satellite Omeid was launched but a later report said the satellite was a dummy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad read the countdown to the launch on Iranian TV.

The urgency of the story just went from Iran successfully launching a spy satellite into space to Iran successfully launching a big rock.

Way to go.

Israeli expert Iftah Shrir’s analysis of the situation:

Iftah Shrir, who heads the Military Balance project at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) claims Iran is still far from its goal of launching a real communications satellite into space. “This was a step towards the launching of an Iranian military satellite, but the road is still long,” he said.

“Prestige-wise a two-kilogram satellite waving an Iranian flag in space would be enough, but capability-wise, even if the satellite is launched, it will be a tiny research satellite without any real ability.” He added that Iran launched a Russian satellite into space in 2005, but it disappeared without a trace.

That’s one small step for Iran, one giant leap for paper weights.