SECRET US PLAN

Efforts dating back to Bush presidency involve slipping Tehran faulty parts

The Trump administration has accelerated a classified US programme to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets, according to officials. In the past month alone, two Iranian attempts to launch satellites have failed within minutes.

The Trump White House has accelerated a secret American programme 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 US to undercut Tehran’s military and isolate its economy.

Officials said it was impossible to measure precisely the success of the programme, 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 January 15 and the other, an unacknowledged attempt, on February 5 — were part of a pattern over the past 11 years. In that time, 67 per cent of Iranian orbital launches have failed, an astonishingly high number compared to a 5 per cent failure rate worldwide for similar space launches.

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

Hours after the January 15 attempt, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted that Iran’s satellite launchers have technologies “virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles.”

The launch failures prompted The New York Times to seek out more than a half-dozen current and former government officials who have worked on the US sabotage programme over the past dozen years.

The officials described a farreaching effort, created under President George W. Bush, to slip faulty parts and materials into Iran’s aerospace supply chains.

The CIA declined to comment on the sabotage efforts.

The covert actions against Iran’s missile and rocket programme are being taken through countries and companies that supply Tehran’s aerospace operations.

Trump comment

French and British officials have joined the United States in calling for ways to counter Iran’s missile programme. At the Pentagon last month to unveil a new missile defence strategy, Trump noted the January 15 failed space launch. Had it succeeded, he said, it would have given Tehran “critical information” it could use “to pursue intercontinental ballistic missile capability, and a capability, actually, of reaching the United States.”