In April, the Islamic Republic launched a military satellite into space for the first time. The launch confirmed what many experts have long suspected: that the regime’s Revolutionary Guard has been conducting a secret space program parallel to the country’s civilian one. In fact, argues Uzi Rubin, Tehran’s plans to develop military space technologies likely go back to the 1980s, and its ambitions include developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs):

The West tends to regard Iran’s space program as a minor appendix of its missile program, itself viewed by the West as far less significant than the ayatollahs’ military nuclear program. But this trivialization of Iran’s space ambitions dangerously misses its true essence. Iran’s space program is one on the cornerstones upon which the entire edifice of Iran’s strategic concept is built.

Iran aspires to leverage itself from a regional power to a regional hegemon, and thence to leadership of the Islamic world, and ultimately to the status of a global power on par with Russia and China. A precondition for achieving global power is possession of the ultimate status symbols: nuclear ICBMs backed by space-based early-warning satellites to ensure a credible second-strike capability. Simply put, the Revolutionary Guard views the “civilian” space program as a cover story for the pursuit of covert programs on global-range missile technologies.

A frank disclosure of the real mission of [Iran’s civilian space agency] was made in a 2014 television interview with General Majid Mussavi, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s air and space force. He stated (in Persian) that “The real mission of [Iran’s] space program is technological advancement to circumvent the self-imposed limitation on missile range to 2,000km.”

The bottom line is this [that] Iran’s space program merits constant and detailed scrutiny no less than its missile program does.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.