China launches new remote sensing satellite

China launched a remote sensing satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province on Friday.

The Yaogan-50 03 satellite was launched at 18:15 (Beijing Time) aboard a modified Long March-6 carrier rocket and entered its planned orbit. The launch mission was a complete success.

The satellite will mainly be used for land survey, crop yield estimation, and disaster prevention and relief.

The launch marked the 672nd flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.

Iran has warned regional countries that any support for the United States in the event of a renewed armed conflict would be regarded as a hostile act toward Tehran, an Iranian official said on Friday.

Iran would be able to identify which regional states are prepared to back American forces if military action resumes, said Fada Hossein Maleki, a member of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, speaking with Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

He added that in such a scenario, Iran could take actions beyond strikes on the military bases of those countries, and those countries themselves will be classified as hostile states.

Iran's Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on the same day that the United States has spent 11 billion U.S. dollars in taxpayers' money on missile defense for Israel within the past three years.

"It has fired more interceptors defending Israel than Israel has," Araghchi said. "That is not a symbiotic relationship. It is a parasitic one."

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have drawn up concrete plans to launch another military strike on Iran after the U.S. midterm elections, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and other informed sources.

However, it remains uncertain whether U.S. President Donald Trump will approve the plan.

A senior Iranian security official has warned that global energy markets will remain volatile "for the next three years" if the U.S. continues its current pressure campaign against Iran.

"Perpetuating the current situation will carry strategic consequences, not least that the energy markets will not find calm for the next three years," Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei said in an interview, published Thursday, with U.S.-based news outlet Drop Site News.

Rezaei said that if another war is imposed on Iran, Tehran still has the capacity to launch missiles and drones at various U.S. assets across the region and will expand its target list to include "cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities."

The official also said Gulf states "are rapidly redefining their relationship with Iran" as they realize that "the U.S. military is incapable of defending its own bases."