Iran's manned space program is a good example of the pitfalls of analyzing the country's military and civilian programs. 1
One the one hand, you have outrageous, even ridiculous stuff. Ahmadinejad offering to be Iran's first astronaut, a space suit that is a children's costume and totally over the top propaganda videos about the monkey they shot into space. 2
On the other hand, hiding beneath the layer of absurdity Western media loves so much, there is a serious development program aimed at manned suborbital flights which after passing its early stages gets frozen for financial and bureaucratic reasons. 3 
So in conclusion, while it's nice to have a good laugh, one should be very careful not to draw major conclusions about Iranian capabilities and intentions based on artefacts generated by state propaganda and bureaucratic dynamics and amplified by Western reporting. 4
