TEHRAN – Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar has criticized the Westerners for seeking to represent Iran’s scientific activities as threatening to the world security.

“The enemies always try to represent the peaceful activities of independent countries as threatening or unsuccessful,” Najjar told reporters on the sidelines of Wednesday’s cabinet session.
His comment came amid the Western powers’ skeptic comments on the nature of Iran’s latest achievement to send a research rocket into space.
Iran fired a research rocket on Feb. 4 to inaugurate its first space center which will be used to launch research satellites.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad ordered the launch of the “Researcher One” rocket which will carry the first homemade satellite named Omid (Hope) into orbit in the next Iranian calendar year (begins March 20).
Referring to the launch of the rocket, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “It’s unfortunate that they continue to do that because it further isolates the country from the rest of the world.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack described the event as “another troubling development”.
French officials said the rocket is in fact a missile that cannot navigate in space, claiming that the technology is aimed at making weapons.
""This new test, presented by the Iranian authorities as the illustration of a space program, when the missile in question does not have extra-atmospheric capabilities, is a further source of concern,"" Reuters quoted French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani as saying.
The Iranian defense minister accused the great powers of seeking to invent new pretexts to prevent the Islamic Republic from making scientific progress.
“Today presence in space is regarded as a source of power for all countries and the reason for the negative stance adopted by some states against Iran is that they are frustrated at Iran’s success in accessing this technology,” Najjar observed