Space Dimensions of the Iran War

.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Jared Isaacman held a press conference on Feb. 27 to explain adjustments to President Donald Trump’s Artemis moon program.

Isaacman did not once mention the war with Iran that started the next day, on Feb. 28. But in the contest for strategic primacy being waged by China and the United States, there are direct lunar implications for the Iran War.

Space dominance is a first requirement for military-strategic dominance on Earth, which, in turn, is necessary to defend strategic military-economic interests in low Earth orbit, on the moon, and beyond.

The importance of space access to the U.S. war against Iran was made clear in a March 2 briefing by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who said, “The first movers were U.S. SPACECOM and U.S. CYBERCOM, layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading Iran’s ability to see, communicate, and respond.”

This meant that U.S. Space Command was among the first U.S. military forces to engage and attack Iran’s ability to fight.

Likewise, for Iran and China, access to space was crucial to their ability to direct Iran’s ballistic and drone barrage.

From Feb. 28 to March 7, Iran fired more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 long-range drones at Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

Iran was able to build its missile force due to China’s annual oil purchase subsidies, and its accuracy was enhanced by access to China’s space surveillance satellite data and BeiDou navigation satellite signals.

To sustain access to low Earth orbit, it has become necessary to achieve access to “deep space,” or to cis-lunar space between Earth and the moon, and even to build access to the moon as the “high ground” to defend access to cis-lunar and low Earth orbit.

To secure access to the moon and potentially defend that access, the main “moon race” between China and the United States will focus on quickly establishing enough moon bases in key strategic locations for possible military use, as well as exploiting moon resources.

This is why, as the U.S. and Israeli efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons continue—and should China attempt to exploit this conflict by launching its long-anticipated invasion of Taiwan—there remains a strategic national security need for the United States to maintain a program that guarantees the democracies’ access to the moon.

Russia offers a cautionary example—its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year, has decimated the Russian space program, and its longstanding manned lunar ambitions will have to depend on Chinese generosity to offer places on its lunar landers.

Also on Feb. 27, Isaacman explained a new Artemis schedule to return Americans to the moon in 2028—even proposing two moon missions that year—to fulfill Trump’s goal of returning Americans to the moon before the end of his term.

In April, the Artemis-II mission will launch to perform a circumlunar mission, or trip around the moon, for three U.S. astronauts and one Canadian astronaut.

The Artemis-III first manned lunar mission, planned for 2028, will instead be rescheduled for 2027 as a low-Earth-orbit test for the new Human Landing System, based on the SpaceX Starship or Blue Origin moon lander—docking with a manned Orion space capsule.

Then, in 2028, the Artemis-IV mission will take Americans back to the moon, with a follow-on Artemis-V moon mission also in 2028, if that schedule can be kept.

NASA is going to scrap a planned larger and more powerful version of the Space Launch System (SLS) manned space launch vehicle, the SLS Block 1B, and one hopes NASA will be working on a less expensive successor based on SpaceX and/or Blue Origin reusable heavy space launch vehicles.

China also has an integrated Earth-space strategy to achieve dominance on Earth and plans to begin sending Chinese astronauts to the moon starting in 2029 or 2030.

China has publicly advertised its progress in building its Long March-10 manned heavy space launch vehicle and in testing its new Mengzhou manned space capsule and Lanyue manned moon landing vehicle.

However, on Earth, China appears to have more options for diverting American attention and resources from space endeavors.

For decades, China has built up nuclear-armed proxy nations such as Pakistan, North Korea, and, almost, Iran, forcing the United States to try to contain their threat, but with China then refusing to expend its military resources defending them, as is presently the case with Iran.

Nevertheless, China could still decide to commence large-scale rearmament of Iran’s terrorist regime to extend that war and force potential diversion of funding from the U.S. space program.

China also has the option of pushing North Korea to start a war against South Korea, to commit nuclear aggression, and even nuclear proliferation, which could drag the United States into additional wars.

China is pursuing such a “proxy”-based strategy because it lacks the means to project massive power globally to compete with Washington—a condition that will change rapidly over the next decade.

China has clearly decided that its proxies can be victims of such wars that weaken the United States sufficiently so that Beijing can pursue its main goal, the invasion of Taiwan and the brutal destruction of its democracy.

It is fortunate that Trump has exercised the foresight and leadership to address the Iran–China nuclear challenge now, despite great pressure to quickly achieve a decisive victory, in order to preserve U.S. military resources so that, among many competing priorities, the Artemis lunar program can be sustained.

But even if the Chinese regime invades Taiwan, Beijing is also planning for other future wars to divert American focus and resources from the moon, a danger that can only be diminished by future victories against China’s proxies and by building the military strength on Earth and in space, sufficient to deter the global and space hegemony ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.