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President Trump has tweeted what experts say is almost certainly an image from a classified satellite or drone, showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.

"The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir [Space Launch Vehicle] Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran," the president said in a tweet that accompanied the image on Friday. "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."

 on Thursday, using images from commercial satellites that flew over Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center. Those images showed smoke billowing from the pad. Iran 

Some of the highest-resolution imagery available commercially comes from the company 

, whose WorldView-2 satellite sports 46-centimeter resolution.

But the image shown in the president's tweet appears to be of far better quality, says 

, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who specializes in analyzing satellite imagery. "The resolution is amazingly high," says Panda. "I would think it's probably below well below 20 centimeters, which is much higher than anything I've ever seen."


Panda says that the tweet discloses "some pretty amazing capabilities that the public simply wasn't privy to before this."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions about the image to the White House, which declined to comment.

The image shows the aftermath of the accident, which experts believe took place while the rocket was being fueled. Clearly visible is the truck used to transport and erect the rocket, and the words "The product of national empowerment," which have been written along the edge of the pad. The picture also shows extensive debris and charring around the pad.

It was not entirely clear where the president's photo came from. Panda believes it was likely taken by a classified U.S. satellite. But 

, deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network at the One Earth Foundation, believes that the resolution is so high, it may be beyond the physical limits at which satellites can operate. "The atmosphere is thick enough that after somewhere around 11 to nine centimeters, things get wonky," she says.

That could mean it was taken by a drone or spy plane, though such a vehicle would be violating Iranian airspace. Hanham also says that the European company Airbus has been experimenting with drones that fly so high, they are technically outside the atmosphere and thus operating outside of national boundaries. But she says she doesn't know whether the U.S. has such a system.

Glare in the center of the image suggest the image in the tweet was itself a photo of a briefing slide. Panda suggests it could have been displayed on a computer screen in a so-called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It's also possible it was a photo of a piece of paper.

Either way, Panda notes a small redaction in the upper-left-hand-corner suggests that the intelligence community had cleared the image for release by the president.

But, both he and Hanham question whether releasing it was a good idea. "You really risk giving away the way you know things," Hanham says. "That allows people to adapt and hide how they carry out illicit activity."

"These are closely held national secrets," Panda adds. "We don't even share a lot of this kind of imagery with our closest allies." In tweeting it out to the world, Trump is letting Iran know exactly what the U.S. is capable of. He's also letting others know as well, Panda says. "The Russians and the Chinese, you're letting them know that these are the kind of things that the United States has the capability of seeing," he says.

Politics and Government News

Geoff Brumfiel

Author

The Friday afternoon tweet has experts picking up their jaws from the floor when they saw a photo of an Iranian space facility.

President Trump tweets sensitive surveillance image of Iran

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