IRGC Aerospace Commander:

Enemies’ Bid to Sabotage Iran’s Missiles Foiled

Date: 24 February 2019 - 21:25

News ID: ۶۳۵۳۳

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said on Sunday the "enemies" of Iran are trying to sabotage the country's missiles so that they would "explode mid-air" but said the bid was foiled.
"They tried as best as they could to sabotage a small part which we import so that our missiles would not reach their target and explode mid-air," IRGC aerospace commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.
"But they couldn't do a damn thing because we had seen this coming from the start and had reinforced this sector," he added.
Earlier this month the New York Times reported that the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump was pushing a secret program aimed at sabotaging Iranian rockets and missiles.
It said Washington was trying to "slip faulty parts and materials into Iran's aerospace supply chains" as part of a campaign to undercut Tehran's military.
In May, Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
Hajizadeh said similar sabotage attempts had happened before and targeted Iran's nuclear and oil sectors.
On Friday, the commander said the IRGC had penetrated U.S. drone command and control networks, releasing footage of a U.S. military aircraft bombing a hacked drone out of fear that it might end up in the hands of Iranian armed forces.
Media outlets speculated that the release of the footage was in response to the report of the U.S. secret plan to sabotage Iranian rockets and missiles.
According to Hajizadeh, the U.S. drone was operating in Syria and Iraq when it was forced to make an emergency landing due to a problem it faced during flight.
The drone was landed with difficulty in a desert area 10 km away from a U.S. base, "however, the Americans did not dare to approach their own drone" and had to bomb it with a warplane, the Fars news agency said.
"Seven or eight aerial vehicles with regular flights in Syria and Iraq were under our control; we could monitor their data, and managed to acquire their first-hand information,” General Hajizadeh said.
Iran famously grounded a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle RQ-170 Sentinel in December 2011 using electronic warfare techniques, as the stealth aircraft was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar near the Afghan border.
Back in November 2018, General Hajizadeh highlighted the Islamic Republic’s drone intelligence, saying Iran now knows in which hangar of the US' Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan the RQ-170 had been deployed.
According to the IRGC Aerospace commander, Iran used the reverse-engineered version of the RQ-170 drone to target Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq.
Iran currently possesses the biggest collection of captured or downed American and Israeli drones, including the US' MQ1, MQ9, Shadow, ScanEagle, and RQ-170 as well as the Israeli regime's Hermes, Hajizadeh added.
The Israeli drone was intercepted and shot down in October 2014 by IRGC forces on its way to the Natanz nuclear facility in the central Isfahan province.
In the field of unmanned aerial vehicles, Iran is now one of the world’s top four or five countries, and the top drone power in the region, General Hajizadeh said.
"The Iranian-made Shahed-129 drone, for example, had round-the-clock flights over terrorists’ positions in Syria and Iraq, and its services were also used by the Syrian army, the Russians, the Hezbollah forces, and others,” he added.
Iran's UAV program has expanded in recent years with more than a dozen models operating for a variety of functions ranging from surveillance to intelligence gathering, carrying bombs and Kamikaze operations.
They have been playing a significant role in the fight against Takfiri terrorists as well as monitoring U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.