The Safir (Persian: سفیر, meaning "ambassador") was the first Iranian expendable launch vehicle able to place a satellite in orbit.

The rocket consists of two stages; The first stage utilizes an upgraded Nodong/Shahab-3 type engine which burns a hypergolic combination of UDMH as fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as oxidant, producing 37 tons (363 kN; 82,500 lbf) of thrust.

The second stage utilizes a pair of smaller gimballed engines called LRE-4, fed by a common turbopump (originally the Vernier engines of the R-27 Zyb Soviet SLBM[6]) burning the same fuel combination as the first stage and producing 3.5 tons (35 kN; 7700 lbf) of thrust.

This configuration gives Safir the ability to inject a payload with a maximum weight of 50 kilograms into low Earth orbit.

[7] Kavoshgar-1 (Persian: کاوشگر ۱, "Explorer-1") was Safir's precursor used as a sounding rocket, a sub-orbital flight was conducted on 4 February 2008, as announced by state-run television.