TheImmortal
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Iran's space program by the most part takes advantage of rocket engines and 1st stage boosters initially developed by the MOD/IRGC and most of the engines Iran's Space Agency works on are by the most part long exhaust (compared to thrust) post boost engines for 2nd and 3rd stages.....
The fact that Iran lost it's best rocket scientist who was also an IRGC officer during that test is basically a testament on how wrong you are about the IRGC not caring about SLV's in fact in one of the last letters written by Tehrani Moghadam to Iran's supreme leader he basically informs Iran's supreme leader of achieving SLV capability and the fact is if he had lived the Qhaeem within 3 years would have been Iran's 1st Solid Fuel SLV.
Also, according to Hajizadeh the head of IRGC Aerospace forces, the very 1st missile project he proposed to Iran's supreme leader when he took command was of a large, long range, wide diameter missile who at that time was shut down by Iran's supreme leader so this idea that the IRGC doesn't care about SLV's is utter nonsense. Do you know how much money the IRGC could of made by just sending 1 commercial communication sat into GSO above our region alone? With the capability to reserve a few channels for it's self for military use.....
Now why did Iran's supreme leader back away from that program? If I was to guess, I would say at that time they likely predicted that they would need to come to a JCPOA type agreement with the west so they chose to stand down on any missile program that could be perceived as an ICBM program capable of hitting U.S. soil and if the U.S. & E.U. had truly stuck to the letter of the agreement all the people that argued for having foreigners send our sat's into space instead would of had a valid argument because due to Iran's economic conditions a domestic SLV program by it's self wouldn't of been worth demolishing our entire future economy over. However, that's if and only if the west had truly stuck to the agreement but they didn't and neither the U.S. nor the EU stuck to the agreement neither under Trump nor Obama.
As for Iran's space Agency being a den of spy's, that today is true however one of the main reason it has turned into a den of spy's is due to how the Rohani Administration restructured Iran's Space Agency into various small parts under the telecommunications ministry and that has clearly made security a nightmare.
All this is just speculation and borderline propaganda.
First of all, almost any rocket scientist will tell you that Solid fuel engines are NOT suitable for SLVs. As boosters sure, but not as the main stage engine, they simply a not efficient in that role.
Only reason IRGC wanted ghaeem was for latent solid fuel ICBM capability. It was disguised under SLV program, but if Iran truly cared to build a powerful SLV it would choose a liquid engine design not a dual use ICBM design.