LONDON — Iranian state television said Monday that the country’s
scientists had succeeded in sending a monkey into space ‘‘as a
prelude to sending humans.’’ Press TV, the state-run satellite
broadcaster, said the animal was launched in a space capsule
code named Pishgam, or Pioneer. The development coincided with
continued stalemate in the unrelated Western effort to persuade
Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program, which Western
powers maintain is designed to create nuclear weapons technology
— an assertion Iran denies. Press TV quoted the director of the
Iran Space Agency, Hamid Fazeli, as saying earlier this month
that ‘‘because of biological similarities between humans and
monkeys, the latter were selected for the space mission.’’ He
also forecast that Iran would send a human into space within the
‘‘next five to eight years,’’ and said Iran would send its
Sharifsat satellite into orbit before the end of March. There
was no independent corroboration of the report, which Press TV
called evidence of ‘