Officials said it was impossible to measure precisely the success of the classified program, 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 Jan. 15 and the other, an unacknowledged attempt, on Feb. 5 were part of a pattern over the past 11 years. In that time, 67 percent of Iranian orbital launches have failed, an astonishingly high number compared to a 5 percent failure rate worldwide for similar space launches.
The setbacks have not deterred Iran. This week, President Hassan Rouhani singled out Tehrans missile fleets as he vowed to continue our path and our military power.
The Trump administration maintains that Irans space program is merely a cover for its attempts to develop a ballistic missile powerful enough to send nuclear warheads flying between continents.
Hours after the Jan. 15 attempt, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted that Irans satellite launchers have technologies virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles.
Mr. Pompeo is in Warsaw this week with Vice President Mike Pence to lead a meeting of 65 nations on encouraging stability in the Middle East, including by expanding economic sanctions against Iran. It is largely an appeal to European allies who, while continuing to oppose President Trumps decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, also agree that the missile tests must stop.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in 2017 in Tehran at an exhibition of the countrys achievements in space technology.CreditIranian Presidency Office, via Associated Press[/caption]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 American sabotage program over the past dozen years. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the covert program.
The officials described a far-reaching effort, created under President George W. Bush, to slip faulty parts and materials into Irans aerospace supply chains. The program was active early in the Obama administration, but had eased by 2017, when Mr. Pompeo took over as the director of the C.I.A. and injected it with new resources.
Tehran is already suspicious. Even before Mr. Trump withdrew last May from the nuclear accord, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of Irans missile program, accused American and allied intelligence agencies of turning their campaigns of infiltration and sabotage to Irans missile complex from its atomic infrastructure.
They want to repeat their nuclear sabotage in the missile area, he told Iranian state television in 2016, vowing the program will never stop under any circumstances.
The C.I.A. declined to comment on the sabotage efforts. Government officials asked The Times to withhold some details of its reporting, mostly involving the identities of specific suppliers to the Iranian program, because the effort is continuing.
Because there are so many things that can stymie a launch from bad timing to bad welding to bad luck some of Irans troubles, aerospace experts warned, could well be the result of normal malfunctions.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of Irans missile program, has said that Irans pursuit of missiles will never stop under any circumstances.CreditMahmood Hossein/Tasnim News Agency, via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]But the recent rise in failures suggests the effort to subvert Irans space launches and missile test flights, and the resulting flows of forensic information needed to lift performance, may now have intensified.
The covert actions against Irans missile and rocket program are being taken through countries and companies that supply Tehrans aerospace operations. French and British officials have joined the United States in calling for ways to counter Irans missile program.
At the Pentagon last month to unveil a new missile defense strategy, Mr. Trump noted the Jan. 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.
Were not going to have that happen, Mr. Trump said.
The Iranian Target
Long before Iran got serious about producing nuclear fuel for a future weapons program, it was on the hunt for powerful missiles. The spark was its long-running fear of Iraq. In the 1980s, Saddam Husseins forces shot waves of missiles at Iranian cities. Hundreds of civilians died, and Iran fired back with Soviet-designed missiles it acquired from Libya, Syria and North Korea.
By the 1990s, Iran was importing a North Korean missile known as the No Dong, which it renamed the Shahab-3, or Shooting Star-3. The missile could hurl warheads about 800 miles, far enough to hit Israel. The No Dongs powerful engine seven feet long from nozzle to fuel pumps eventually became the first-stage propulsion unit for most of Irans long-range missiles and for all of its space launchers.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
A Shahab-3 missile at a military parade in 2000 in Tehran. The missile can hurl warheads about 800 miles.CreditAtta Kenare/Agence France-Presse Getty Images[/caption]After the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Washington and its allies stepped up efforts to thwart Tehrans missile and nuclear ambitions. By 2006, the United Nations Security Council demanded that Iran stop enriching uranium, a main fuel of nuclear weapons. Irans refusal prompted the imposition of sanctions that banned the import of parts, materials and technologies for manufacturing nuclear fuel and for building missiles.
Under Mr. Bush, two covert programs against Iran rose in tandem: one focused on nuclear materials, the other on missiles.
The C.I.A., with help from the National Security Agency, searched for ways to subvert factories, supply chains and launchers.
It did not take much, according to officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations. Flight disruption could take no more than a small design change in a critical valve, a modest alteration in an engine part or guidance system, or a contaminated alloy for making launcher fins, crucial for aerodynamic stability.
American military officials urged Congress to put more money into programs they obliquely hailed in open testimony as left of launch techniques so called because they rely on sabotaging launchers before they are fired.
n Irans case, that meant identifying the networks of suppliers and subcontractors who sold aerospace parts and materials to Tehran. The United Nations sanctions meant Iran also relied increasingly on black markets and shadowy middlemen targets the C.I.A. found comparatively easy to penetrate, according to two former officials.
Targeting Irans Missile-Rocket Complex
For at least 12 years, American intelligence agencies have sought to subvert Irans supply chains for its production of missiles and space rockets. The complex relies heavily on the No Dong engine, which North Korea developed in the 1980s from a Russian design. Iran often tries to keep its launches secret, but experts say it has fired a dozen orbital rockets since 2008 eight of which have failed. This translates into a failure rate of 67 percent, compared with a worldwide rate of 5 percent during the 2010s.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="476"]
By Guilbert Gates/The New York Times | Sources: Norbert Brgge, www.b14643.de; Center for Strategic and International Studies; James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies; Space Launch Report[/caption]The key insight, as several participants described it, was to subvert test launches of new missiles. If the tests failed, Iran would hesitate to embark on mass production.
President Barack Obama quickened the clandestine war with disruptions aimed not only at missiles but also at a newly emerging target space launchers.
By definition, rockets loft satellites into orbit, and missiles fire warheads though the fringes of space to hit remote targets. Mr. Obamas first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, held that the development and testing of one class of launcher could advance the other.
Some rocket specialists havechallenged such arguments, saying that whatever overlap exists is too small to be significant. For its part, Iran insists that its satellite launches have no military value and that it seeks no nuclear weapons.
When Mr. Pompeo arrived at the C.I.A., there was relatively little nuclear activity underway in Iran. Most of Tehrans centrifuges had been dismantled under the 2015 agreement, and 97 percent of the countrys nuclear fuel had been shipped to Russia.
But Iran had ramped up its missile and space program. Mr. Pompeo immediately focused on the supply chain for rockets and missiles, a world he knew intimately.
He had graduated from West Point with a degree in mechanical engineering and founded, with classmates, Thayer Aerospace, named for a famous superintendent of the military academy. The company made parts for Boeing, Lockheed and Raytheon. Mr. Pompeo understood what happens when aerospace parts are produced with less than extreme precision. From 2011 to 2017, he served in Congress, including on the House Intelligence Committee.
When he got to the C.I.A., he pressed to reinvigorate the sabotage program. It was, a former official said, an obvious target.
Evidence of Manipulation
It can take years to seed a foreign aerospace program with faulty parts and materials. And typically, it is impossible to know if the bad technology is ever installed in particular launchers.
In one case, the United States got lucky: A short-range Iranian-made missile landed in Baghdads Green Zone, but failed to detonate. When experts pulled it apart, they found one of the American-sabotaged parts inside, according to a former senior official.
Iran hides its failures and exaggerates its successes, said Shea Cotton, a chronicler of Iranian launchings at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, based in Monterey, Calif.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
Iran launched a Simorgh, a satellite-carrying rocket, in July 2017.CreditIranian Defense Ministry, via Associated Press[/caption]Geography also affects learning about the repercussions. Launchings from North Korea are relatively easy for Washington to monitor because the peninsular state, about 100 miles wide at its waist, is surrounded by American bases, fleets, radars and allies. Sometimes missiles fall into the sea and are recovered by the United States or its allies.
By comparison, Iran is twice the size of Texas, and missile components can fall into its own territory. But the numbers suggest that the left-of-launch campaign against Iran has taken its toll.
Iran first succeeded in putting a small satellite into orbit in 2009, just as it was ramping up its nuclear program. It did so again in 2011, 2012 and 2015. Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who publishes Jonathans Space Report and specializes in orbital monitoring, recently noted that those four launches were the only clear successes out of a dozen.
At least once, an Iranian rocket exploded on the launchpad, leaving damage so extensive that satellites passing overhead could make out blast scars, burned wreckage and a blackened rocket transporter. Iranian officials kept silent on that disaster, in 2012.
So far, Iran has failed to successfully test the newest generation of its satellite launcher a bigger, more powerful rocket known as Simorgh or Phoenix. The vehicle, roughly nine stories tall, debuted in April 2016. Iran wrapped the test flight in secrecy, and sky monitors know for sure only that no satellite went into orbit.
In July 2017, another Simorgh roared off a launchpad at the Imam Khomeini Space Center, a complex east of Tehran named for the nations first supreme leader. Iran called it a success. But once again, no satellite was seen. Reports said Washington concluded there was a catastrophic failure.
In January, Mr. Pompeo warned Iran against launching a Simorgh that spy satellites had detected was in preparation. After it lifted off, on Jan. 15, Iranian officials declared it suffered what they called a third-stage failure.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
The return of the classified program was ordered by Mike Pompeo in early 2017, weeks into his yearlong tenure as director of the C.I.A. He is now the secretary of state.CreditJakub Gavlak/EPA, via Shutterstock[/caption]Sometimes life does not go as expected, Irans minister of telecommunications, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, said in a Twitter post.
Some experts attributed Irans poor performance to other factors, including trade embargoes that block the best technology. Its not a great record, but its not out-of-the-family, especially given the sanctions, said Dr. McDowell, the Harvard astronomer. It makes it harder to get parts.
The secret American program parallels a cybersabotage effort that was aimed at North Korea, which suffered anembarrassing series of missile failures in 2016before suspending its flight tests a year later.
North Korea has since developed solid-fueled missiles an effort that Tehran is nowracing to match. Solid fuels are not as vulnerable to covert meddling as the welters of hardware behind liquid-fueled missiles.
A Warsaw Warning
In Warsaw, Mr. Pompeo is expected to repeat his warnings about the danger of Tehrans missile program and to press European and Arab states to expand sanctions and missile defenses aimed at Iran.
There will almost certainly be no reference to the United States secret sabotage efforts. But when Mr. Trump spoke at the Pentagon last month, he said nothing about Russia, China or North Korea as missile threats. He spoke only of Iran.
Our strategy,Mr. Trump said, is grounded in one overriding objective: to detect and destroy every type of missile attack against any American target, whether before or after launch.
David E. Sanger reported from Warsaw, and William J. Broad from New York.
A version of this article appears in print onFeb. 14, 2019, on PageA1of the New York editionwith the headline:U.S. Resurrects Plan to Cripple Iranian Missiles.
