BICOM

A secret US sabotage operation may have been responsible for the failed launch of two Iranian satellites.

According to a report in the New York Times, the Trump administration has recently accelerated a secret American programme which US officials described as a far-reaching effort, created under President George W. Bush, to slip faulty materials into Iran’s aerospace supply chain.

The programme’s scope was reduced in the last years of the Obama administration, but was injected with new resources after Mike Pompeo took over as CIA Director in 2017. In the last 11 years, 67 per cent of Iranian launches have failed; this compares to a 5 per cent rate of failure worldwide for similar launches.

Yesterday, 27 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed in a suicide attack in south-eastern Iran. The bomber targeted a bus transporting personnel near the border of Pakistan, in Sistan-Baluchestan province. Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni Muslim militant group, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The local branch of the IRGC responsible for the area said the unit had been returning from the border with Pakistan when a car filled with explosives blew up beside their bus on the Khash-Zahedan road. In a statement, it blamed “takfiri terrorists and mercenaries of the intelligence services of hegemonic powers”. “Takfiri” refers to Sunni extremists who consider other Muslims as non-believers.

Also on Wednesday the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled that Iran can proceed with a bid to unfreeze assets in the US. The ICJ said it: “Unanimously rejects the preliminary objections to admissibility raised by the United States of America”. The US has called for the case to be halted because of Iran’s support for international terrorism. The US Supreme Court has said that Iran must use its assets to compensate victims and relatives of victims of attacks blamed on Iran. These include the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.