Dubai, June 15: Satellite images appear to show Iran readying for a space launch on Tuesday, with a rocket seen on a rural desert launching pad, as tension remains high over the country’s nuclear program.

At Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s rural Semnan province, the site of frequent recent failed attempts to put a satellite into orbit, images from Maxar Technologies showed a launching pad.

A rocket on a transporter, preparing to be lifted and put on a launch tower, was shown in one image. A later picture on Tuesday afternoon showed the rocket apparently on the tower.

Iran did not acknowledge a coming launch at the spaceport and its mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But its state-run Irna news agency in May said that Iran would probably have seven homemade satellites ready for launch by the end of its calendar year in March 2023.

A Defence Ministry official also recently suggested Iran soon could test its new solid-fuelled, satellite-carrying rocket called the Zuljanah.

It was not clear when the launch would take place, although erecting a rocket typically means a launch is imminent.

Nasa fire satellites, which detect flashes of light from space, did not immediately see any activity over the site late on Tuesday night.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. But the programme has recently had troubles.

There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh, a type of satellite-carrying rocket. A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 also killed three researchers, authorities said at the time.

The launch pad used in Tuesday’s preparations remains scarred from an explosion in August 2019 that even drew the attention of then-US President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump later tweeted what appeared to be a classified surveillance image of the launch failure.

Satellite images from February suggested a failed Zuljanah launch this year, although Iran did not acknowledge it.

The successive failures raised suspicion of outside interference in Iran’s programme, something Mr Trump hinted at by tweeting at the time that the US “was not involved in the catastrophic accident.”

There has been no evidence offered, however, to show foul play in any of the failures, and space launches remain challenging even for the world’s most successful programmes.

Meanwhile, Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Coros in April 2020 revealed its own secret space programme by successfully launching a satellite into orbit.

The Guard launched another satellite this March from another site in Semnan province, just east of the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Judging from the launch pad used, Iran likely is preparing for the Zuljanah test launch, said John Krzyzaniak, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Mr Krzyzaniak this week suggested a launch was imminent based on activity at the site.

Iranian state television aired footage of a successful Zuljanah launch in February 2021.

The US has claimed that Iran’s satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The US intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment, published in March, claims such a satellite launch vehicle “shortens the timeline” to an intercontinental ballistic missile for Iran as it uses “similar technologies.”

Iran, which has long said it does not seek nuclear weapons, previously maintained that its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component.

US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organised military nuclear programme in 2003.

But Iran’s likely preparations for a launch come as tension has been heightened in recent days over its nuclear programme.

Iran now says it will remove 27 IAEA surveillance cameras from its nuclear sites as it enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

Iran and the US insist they are willing to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal, under which Tehran drastically curbed its enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Mr Trump withdrew the US from the accord in 2018, setting in motion attacks and confrontations starting in 2019 that continue today into the administration of President Joe Biden.

Talks in Vienna about reviving the deal have been on a “pause” since March.

Building any nuclear bomb would still take Iran more time, analysts say, although they warn its advances make the programme more dangerous.

Israel has threatened in the past that it would carry out a pre-emptive strike to stop Iran, and it is already suspected in recent killings targeting Iranian officials.-Agencies