US revives secret program to sabotage Iranian missiles and rockets

Even before Trump withdrew last May from the nuclear accord, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of Iran’s missile program, accused U.S. and allied intelligence agencies of turning their campaigns of “infiltration and sabotage” to Iran’s missile complex from its atomic infrastructure.

By David E. Sanger and William J. Broad

The Trump White House has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets, according to current and former administration officials, who described it as part of an expanding campaign by the United States to undercut Tehran’s military and isolate its economy.

Officials said it was impossible to measure precisely the success of the classified program, which has never been publicly acknowledged. But in the past month alone, two Iranian attempts to launch satellites have failed within minutes.

Those two rocket failures — one that Iran announced on Jan. 15 and the other, an unacknowledged attempt, on Feb. 5 — were part of a pattern over the past 11 years. In that time, 67 percent of Iranian orbital launches have failed, an astonishingly high number compared to a 5 percent failure rate worldwide for similar space launches.

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Iran unveils new missile on 40th anniversary of revolution

Iran has unveiled a new criuse missile with a range of thirteen hundred kilometres, putting it in range of one of its biggest enemies, Israel.

The setbacks have not deterred Iran. This week, President Hassan Rouhani singled out Tehran’s missile fleets as he vowed to “continue our path and our military power.”

The Trump administration maintains that Iran’s space program is merely a cover for its attempts to develop a ballistic missile powerful enough to send nuclear warheads flying between continents.