Last Friday, Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed that his country’s most recent attempt to launch a satellite into orbit has failed. The launch was the second attempt by the Islamic Republic in the past two months.
Tehran has been at work at its space program for quite some time. The first Iranian satellite was put into space back in 2009, on the country’s 30th anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. This month, Iran marked the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
Last month, an Iranian space rocket launch carrying an Earth observation spacecraft faltered before reaching orbit. The failure didn’t deter the country’s leadership and a second launch was planned. But with the second failure in such a short span of time, some in Iran are becoming suspicious.
Some Iranian officials think that the U.S. is actually behind the botched rocket launches, and has been conspiring to sabotage the Iranian space program for a long time. Minister Zarif himself alluded to this when answering questions about the most recent launch failure. When asked about the existence of an American conspiracy, Zarif responded: “It’s quite possible. We don’t know yet, we need to look into it very carefully.”
Indeed the U.S. has been critical of Iran’s space-related activities, claiming that space programs are simply a cover for developing ballistic missile technology.
But there has been little evidence of any U.S. government meddling in Iran’s space ventures. Until now.
The day before the most recently failed launch, The New York Times published an article claiming the U.S. has been engaged in a secret plan to disrupt Iran’s space ambitions for over a decade. The authors claim the sources for the article include “current and former administration officials.”
While there has been no confirmation of this claim by any official source, it lends quite a bit of credibility to Iran’s suspicions. Time will tell how much credibility there is behind accusations of American involvement.
