Satellite images, expert suggest Iranian space launch coming

Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.

Conducting a launch amid the Vienna talks fits the hard-line posture struck by Tehran's negotiators, who already described six previous rounds of diplomacy as a "draft," exasperating Western nations. Germany's new foreign minister has gone as far as to warn that "time is running out for us at this point."

But all this fits into a renewed focus on space by Iran's hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who studies Tehran's program. With Iran's former President Hassan Rouhani who shepherded the nuclear deal out of office, concerns about alienating the talks with launches that the U.S. asserts aids Tehran's ballistic missile program likely have faded.