The Space Race Continues

The race to space has just become much more interesting, and hits close to home. Iran has begun increasing the scope and technological sophistication of their space program. With help from Russia they have begun launching satellites (so far just small ones) but have a grand 20 year plan to catch up with other superpowers like the United States and China. They have not explicitly mentioned plans for space exploration and claim the satellites are solely for the purposes of monitoring the weather and natural disasters, but monitoring the activities of countries close by would not be that hard to maneuver. Also, classified information has been swapped between the Iranians and Russia. The potential military crisis that could play out is almost too much for the imagination to take.