Weeks after the Iranian government had announced it was building new launch bases for its domestic satellite program, newly published pictures of one such site have led analysts to conclude it was designed to test ballistic missiles rather than launch space rockets, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The new site is close to Iran’s first space center in the northern Semnan province. A picture of the base published by IHS Jane’s Military and Security Assessments shows a 70 ft. tall launch tower sitting on a 600 by 420 ft. launch pad. The picture also shows a 375 ft. long exhaust deflector.

The Telegraph quotes analysts who say they base their speculation on the fact that the unfinished site, located 25 miles south east of the city of Shahrud, does not include a storage facility for the liquid rocket fuel which is used in the Iranian space program. This would suggest that the base is being built for ballistic missiles, which use solid fuel.

Matthew Clements, who edited these assessments, said: “This site could be a facility for launching satellites into orbit. However, Iran is already building at least one other site for this purpose and, looking at the satellite imagery we have got, we believe that this facility is most likely used for testing ballistic missiles. Its location and orientation would be suitable for long-range missile tests as they would fly over Iranian territory for 870 miles, meaning large quantities of flight data could be gathered before they drop into the Indian Ocean.”

“At the same time,” Clements added, “we can’t see any storage facilities for the liquid fuel needed for the rockets that launch satellites, suggesting it will be used for solid-fuel ballistic missiles.”

He also said there was no indication that the base was a nuclear facility.

In July, Iranian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Mohammad Hassan Nami announced that Iran is planning to launch several new space centers to “monitor and observe different space objects and satellites passing through the country’s atmosphere,” and introduced the new space center in Semnan province.

“We are building other centers too and we are trying to have a powerful start,” he added.

But if the entire project turns out to be a ruse intended to hide Iran’s efforts to produce a missile with the range to hit Tel-Aviv, it would be the first time such a ruse was attempted using a monkey.

In January, Iran’s Aerospace Industries announced that it has sent a monkey into space on the back of Pishgam (Pioneer) explorer rocket, and that the monkey came back.

Aerospace Industries said it was planning to send humans into space.

But Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute who has written about the Iranian missile program, told the Telegraph Iran’s actual plans are far more sinister: “We often talk about Iran’s nuclear program,” Joshi said, “but what really spooks countries in the region is the ballistic missiles that could act as a delivery system.”

He said Iran had been laboring to develop solid fuel rockets which are quicker to deploy than liquid fuel versions. He commented: “If you look at why their missile program has been so slow, one reason is their difficulties with solid fuel. A testing site which helps in that regard is concerning. Testing is critical. You don’t improve missiles until you test them.”

First published in Missing Peace Turkish news agency Anadulo, citing Egypt’s oil minister Sherif Haddara, yesterday reported that Egypt will exhaust strategic oil reserves by the end of June.

According to Haddara, Egypt has enough diesel fuel to last eight days, butane enough for ten days and petrol enough for 14 days.

The news agency stated that the government was currently providing the nation’s gas stations with 18,000 tons of octane per day and 37,000 tons of diesel fuel, while also providing the country’s power stations with 23,000 tons of low-quality mazut fuel.

In recent weeks and months, Egypt has seen a spate of intermittent power blackouts, which government officials have attributed to chronic fuel shortages.

The situation in Egypt is rapidly spinning out of control. Last weekend two men were shot dead during clashes between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and opponents of the regime.

Secular oppositions groups have announced that on June 30th mass demonstrations will resume in order to force the current Islamist government out of power. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies reacted this weekend by staging a massive rally in support of president Mursi.

David Goldman an analyst for The Middle East Forum wrote in his analysis for the Asian Times that Egypt is dying and cannot be fixed anymore.

Here are some excerpts from his article:

“No-one has proposed a way to find the more than US$20 billion a year that Egypt requires to stay afloat. In June 2011, then French president Nicholas Sarkozy talked about a Group of Eight support program of that order of magnitude. No Western (or Gulf State) government, though, is willing to pour that sort of money down an Egyptian sinkhole.

Egypt remains a pre-modern society, with nearly 50% illiteracy, a 30% rate of consanguineal marriage, a 90% rate of female genital mutilation, and an un- or underemployment rate over 40%”

Today the commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi, threatened that the army would not stay on the sidelines while the country is slipping into darkness. He warned that Egypt could descend into a civil war.

Sissi pointed out that “the armed forces had avoided being drawn into the political arena, but that its national, historic and moral responsibility to the people makes it imperative that it intervenes to stop Egypt slipping into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal fighting, exchanging accusations of treason and criminality, sectarian sedition, and the collapse of institutions.”

He warned against the dangers of division within the political arena following last Friday’s demonstrations in support of President Mursi.

He said: “It is important to have harmony among all parties, and those who think this situation is good for the country are mistaken. It harms the country and threatens Egyptian national security.”

To make things worse the situation in Sinai is also deteriorating. The newspaper Egypt Daily News painted a grim picture of the situation in the Sinai Peninsula.

“The situation in Sinai is just shockingly bad,” said Amr Hamzawy, an opposition politician and former MP. “We have both a security crisis and a development crisis there and we’ve had them for a long time.”

The stakes for Sinai’s drift toward chaos are high. The peninsula’s eographic position makes it vitally important not only to regional stability but to the global economy as well. The recent rise of Islamist militant groups in Sinai—its vast unsecured spaces are fertile ground for both recruitment and training—has led to fears of a fanatical armed enclave directly bordering both Israel and the Gaza Strip, according to Egypt Daily News

Some protesters in Cairo have now set up tents at the Defense Ministry and demand that Morsi hands over power to the army.

What are bio-fuels? How are they made? And do you think they are a viable solution to the oil crisis? On this week’s Goldstein on Gelt show, Jonathan Trent of the NASA Ames Research Center and an adjunct professor in biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz introduces the Omega project and discusses other natural sources of fuel. Find out more by tuning into a very natural podcast this week.

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