By Dmitry Shlapentokh

While Iran is more usually in the news over claims that it is trying to develop nuclear weapons, recent success in the nation’s nascent space program stands as testament to cosmic ambitions.

Iranian authorities described the February 3 launch of a Kavoshgar-3 rocket as part of a space research project. A manned mission would follow the experimental capsule – which contained a mouse, a turtle and worms – into orbit, they said.

“[Iranian] scientists will be sent into space and they will observe the universe from there,” President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said on February 3 as he unveiled the Simorgh (Phoenix) rocket, whose maiden launch this year will be another step in that direction.
The path of the Iranians’ cosmic exploration is similar to Russia’s experience in the not so distant past. While kindred spirits in space, however, geopolitical reality back on Earth may yet put them at odds. Russia is coming under US pressure to back “crushing sanctions” that the US and Israel want to impose over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists the program is being used to generate energy, not weapons.

Ahmadinejad proclaimed that Iran’s quest in space was propelled not just by economic and scholarly reasons – the military implications of the launch were not mentioned – but that it had very different implications. Space exploration put Iranians and, implicitly, humanity, closer to God, and would help transcend history as it is usually understood.

Iran’s first successful launch into space orbit took place last year with an indigenous rocket, Safir-2. The Kavoshgar-3 was designed and built under the supervision of the Defense Ministry and is able to transfer telemetric data, live video and flight analysis, officials said.

Russia’s view of Iran is similar to the US, which sees the technological feats as a reminder of how Iran is close to the Soviet Union of old, at the time of the regime’s messianic virility. For the present-day Russian elite, the Soviet era has become not just completely irrelevant but absolutely hostile, an image of an alien and dangerous country.

The similarities between the Iranian and Soviet exploration of the cosmos are revealing.

Space exploration has become incorporated in what one could call the “Iranian idea”, a set of political-philosophical beliefs that defines Iranians’ historical mission. The latest rocket launch took place during Iran’s annual celebration of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and also the 31st anniversary of the revolution of 1979 that brought down the Shah of Iran.

The Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik in 1957 on the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. This came as a surprise to the West, which looked at the Soviet regime as a backward theocracy, with Marxism-Leninism as a peculiar religious doctrine, which, in the view of the observers, precluded any creativity, even less so a technological breakthrough.

Sputnik was followed by the launch into space of two living creatures – dogs Belka and Strelka – and in 1961, the first man – Yuri Gagarin – was launched into space. These stunning achievements had led to a revival of what was called “Russian cosmism”. This important – and still understudied in the West – brand of Russian thought regarded the conquest of nature and the cosmos as humanity’s destiny.

This theory had blended nicely with some versions of Russian messianic nationalism, which regarded Russia as a “collective Christ”, destined to lead humanity to ultimate salvation. While humanity was the “chosen species”, Russia was the “chosen nation”. Consequently, only Russian feats of engineering – both technological and social – could save humanity.

Marxist anti-capitalist collectivism blended with the preaching of the spirituality of Russian nationalism – with technological feats with the exploration of the cosmos as one of its major manifestations. The aspect of Russian and, in a way, Soviet philosophy was at the heart of intellectuals who opposed the Boris Yeltsin regime. They believed that the resurrection of Soviet/Russian cosmism should go along with an alliance with Iran to confront the West, mostly the US, whose philosophy and political/economic arrangements were completely different from those of Russia.

In the very beginning of the post-Soviet era in the early 1990s, there was a feeling, at least among the motley groups of Russian nationalists, that an umbilical cord still connected post-Soviet Russia with its Soviet and pre-Soviet past. President Vladimir Putin’s advent instilled in them the hope that Russia would return to its grand messianic past and once again would place itself in opposition to the West. In the beginning of the Putin era, Russia seemed to have moved closer to Iran, despite the US’s clear displeasure. This hope was dashed.

By the beginning of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency it had become clear that the departure from the Soviet, moreover entire Russian, model of civilization, as it had been known for centuries, was irreversible. And indeed, present-day ambitions put Russia more akin to the West than the grand messianic imperial dreams of its forebears.

The US is in the process of losing its industrial skeleton and blaming others for its problems. Indeed, although China-bashing for “unfair competition” has a long history, now a “Japanese front” is open, and serious problems have been found in Japanese cars. The Russian elite does the same: Japanese cars imported by residents of the Russian far east are being blamed for the declining Russian auto industry.

Both Russia and the US base their economies on the existence of “bubbles” – financial in nature in the US, and over energy in Russia. Even American and Russian leaders sound alike. “Yes, we can,” President Barack Obama boldly proclaimed in the beginning of his presidency, drawing on a brilliant future of American renovation and modernization. This was also Medvedev’s song in the slogan “Forward Russia.”

Still, the utterances of both are basically empty talk, for the social-economic arrangements of both countries make any radical changes impossible. And for both of them, the quickly developing Iran with its messianic elite has evoked nothing but fear.

It is hardly surprising that Iran’s copying of the Soviet path elicits dread rather than admiration in the hearts of a present-day Russian elite which is moving closer to the US in the demand for tougher sanctions on Tehran.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of East Against West: The First Encounter – The Life of Themistocles, 2005.