US Intensifies Sabotage Campaign on Iran's Missiles, Space Program – Report
00:47 14.02.2019(updated 00:48 14.02.2019)
The US initiated and "accelerated" a secret program to sabotage Iran's rocket and missile tests as part of a campaign to weaken Tehran's military and suffocate its economy, the New York Times reports.
The two most recent failed launches reportedly occurred January 15 and February 5. The Times noted that determining the US program's success is not possible but that the attempted launches were thwarted "within minutes." The launch failures match up with a pattern extending back 11 years: two-thirds of Iran's orbital launches have been failures over this period, while the average failure rate for comparable launches is 5 percent, the report concludes.
"We won't stand by while the regime threatens international security," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a January 3 announcement, adding that "Iran plans to fire off Space Launch Vehicles with virtually the same technology as ICBMs." ICBMs refers to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
It's been widely reported that the US weaponized computer worms against Iran in the late 2000s with Stuxnet, a high-level software program credited with "escaping the digital realm to wreak physical destruction" to sabotage centrifuges at Iranian nuclear plants, Wired magazine has reported.
It's worth noting that a new Trump White House sabotage campaign against the Iranian space launches would be unlikely to put Tehran into a state of shock. Back in 2016, a senior Iranian military commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced that Iran's enemies sought to "repeat their nuclear sabotage in the missile area," Iran's Press TV reported.
Hajizadeh, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Aerospace Division, may have been referring to Stuxnet or sanctions Washington had imposed on Iran for testing ballistic missiles, Press TV noted at the time.
"After the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or simply the Iran nuclear deal], most of the focus of the intelligence services, especially by the Americans, has turned to the missile issue," the brigadier general said in 2016.
John Bolton, the US national security adviser, confirmed in September that the White House had authorized "offensive cyber operations" to deter foreign adversaries, the Washington Post reported at the time.
© Sputnik
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