Sabotage

Iran's Guards: 'enemies' trying to sabotage missiles

The Revolutionary Guards on Sunday accused "enemies" of Iran of trying to sabotage the country's missiles so that they would "explode midair" 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 midair," Fars news agency reported, quoting the Guards' aerospace commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh.

"But they couldn't do a damn thing because we had seen this coming from the start and had reinforced this sector," he added, accusing Iran's "enemies" of sabotage without naming any specific country.

Iran reined in most of its nuclear programme under a landmark 2015 deal with major powers in return for sanctions relief but has continued to develop its ballistic missile technology.

Earlier this month the New York Times (NYT) reported that a secret US programme to "sabotage Iran's missile's and rockets" had been in existence for years, and was being "accelerated" by the current administration.

Sabotage

Russian investigators probe mysterious hole in International Space Station capsule

A Russian cosmonaut who got a close-up view of a mysterious hole in a Soyuz capsule docked to the International Space Station said Monday that the opening was drilled from inside the spacecraft and Russian law enforcement agencies are investigating what caused it.
  
Sergei Prokopyev said investigators were looking at samples he and crewmate Oleg Kononenko collected during a Dec. 12 spacewalk. Prokopyev and two other crew members returned to Earth last week after more than six months in orbit aboard the station.

Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow first noted a small drop in the station's internal air pressure on Aug. 29. The next day, the lab's crew traced the leak to the upper compartment in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft that carried three crew members to the complex in June. 

The crew plugged the hole with epoxy and gauze. Photographs clearly showed multiple scars caused by a drill bit and one small hole that was plugged by the crew.

Sabotage

Incredibly rare exploding 'rat bomb' given to British spy to destroy German factories during the Second World War goes up for auction for £1,500

A rare exploding 'rat bomb' that was used by Allied spies in a bizarre bid to destroy German factories in the war has been unearthed.

British scientists stuffed dozens of dead rats with explosives, detonators and fuses to act as a disguised bomb.

The idea was to get French Resistance fighters and Special Operations Executive agents to infiltrate German armament factories and leave the dead rodents in the boiler rooms.

The Germans would naturally throw the vermin straight into the furnace, triggering a huge explosion and wreaking havoc in Nazi-occupied France.

In the event, the first batch of 100 'Rat Bombs' were intercepted by the Germans in 1942 and the plan was never put into practice.

It did, however, cause a great deal of confusion amongst the Germans as they assumed there were thousands of other 'Rat Bombs' that had been laid and went on an epic hunt for them,

Sabotage

'Mossad Agent' Sentenced to Death: Who's Targeting Iran's Nuclear Scientists?

The killings of Iranian nuclear scientists have prompted political analysts to assume during an interview with Sputnik that Israel could have been behind the sabotage of Tehran's atomic program. An Israeli academic argues that one cannot blame Tel Aviv for the assassinations. Meanwhile, an alleged Mossad agent has been sentenced to death in Iran.

"The only way to paralyze Iran or another country in any particular technological area is to destroy the country's science and liquidate its scientists," Emad Abshenas, an Iranian political analyst and editor-in-chief of the Iran Press newspaper, told Sputnik Persian, commenting on Iran's sentencing to death of a so-called "Mossad agent" who was supposedly behind the killings of several top nuclear physicists.

According to Abshenas, Iran is waging an information war with some countries, including Israel, while the Iranian special services "exercise strict control over those who are spying for Israel." The analyst underscored that "there are many people in Iran working for Israel and engaged in terrorist activities to undermine the national security of the country."