Tehran, 2006:
Posted on 04/25/2005 6:19:49 AM PDT by DJ Taylor
WASHINGTON -- Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America's technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world's lone superpower, say U.S. intelligence sources, top scientists and western missile industry experts.
The radical Shiite regime has conducted successful tests to determine if its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, can be detonated by a remote-control device while still in high-altitude flight.
Scientists, including President Reagan's top science adviser, William R. Graham, say there is no other explanation for such tests than preparation for the deployment of Electromagnetic Pulse weapons – even one of which could knock out America's critical electrical and technological infrastructure, effectively sending the continental U.S. back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.
Iran will have that capability – at least theoretically – as soon as it has one nuclear bomb ready to arm such a missile. North Korea, a strategic ally of Iran, already boasts such capability.
The stunning report was first published over the weekend in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by WND's founder.
Just last month, Congress heard testimony about the use of such weapons and the threat they pose from rogue regimes.
Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as "successful" tests. Even primitive Scud missiles could be used for this purpose. And top U.S. intelligence officials reminded members of Congress that there is a glut of these missiles on the world market. They are currently being bought and sold for about $100,000 apiece.
"A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead 'on target' with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere," wrote Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., in the Washington Post a week ago. "No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters – al-Qaida is believed to own about 80 such vessels – and make sure to get it a few miles in the air."
The Iranian missile tests were more sophisticated and capable of detonation at higher elevations – making them more dangerous.
Detonated at a height of 60 to 500 kilometers above the continental U.S., one nuclear warhead could cripple the country – knocking out electrical power and circuit boards and rendering the U.S. domestic communications impotent.
While Iran still insists officially in talks currently underway with the European Union that it is only developing nuclear power for peaceful civilian purposes, the mid-flight detonation missile tests persuade U.S. military planners and intelligence agencies that Tehran can only be planning such an attack, which depends on the availability of at least one nuclear warhead.
Some analysts believe the stage of Iranian missile developments suggests Iranian scientists will move toward the production of weapons-grade nuclear material shortly as soon as its nuclear reactor in Busher is operative.
Jerome Corsi, author of "Atomic Iran," told WorldNetDaily the new findings about Iran's Electromagnetic Pulse experiments significantly raise the stakes of the mullah regime's bid to become a nuclear power.
"Up until now, I believed the nuclear threat to the U.S. from Iran was limited to the ability of terrorists to penetrate the borders or port security to deliver a device to a major city," he said. "While that threat should continue to be a grave concern for every American, these tests by Iran demonstrate just how devious the fanatical mullahs in Tehran are. We are facing a clever and unscrupulous adversary in Iran that could bring America to its knees."
Earlier this week, Iran's top nuclear official said Europe must heed an Iranian proposal on uranium enrichment or risk a collapse of the talks.
The warning by Hassan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, came as diplomats from Britain, France and Germany began talks with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, ahead of a more senior-level meeting in London set for April 29. Enrichment produces fuel for nuclear reactors, which can also be used in the explosive core of nuclear bombs.
"The Europeans should tell us whether these ideas can work as the basis for continued negotiations or not," Rowhani said, referring to the Iranian proposal put forward last month that would allow some uranium enrichment. "If yes, fine. If not, then the negotiations cannot continue," he said.
Some analysts believe Iran is using the negotiations merely to buy time for further development of the nuclear program.
The U.S. plans, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to allow the EU talks to continue before deciding this summer to push for United Nations sanctions against Iran.
Last month, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security chaired by Kyl, held a hearing on the Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, threat.
"An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies – terrorist or otherwise," wrote Kyl "And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years."
The purpose of an EMP attack, unlike a nuclear attack on land, is not to kill people, but "to kill electrons," as Graham explained. He serves as chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack and was director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to the president during the Reagan administration.
Graham told WorldNetDaily he could think of no other reason for Iran to be experimenting with mid-air detonation of missiles than for the planning of an EMP-style attack.
"EMP offers a bigger bang for the buck," he said. He also suggested such an attack makes a U.S. nuclear response against a suspected enemy less likely than the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major U.S. city.
A 2004 report by the commission found "several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapons-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication."
"EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences," the report said. "EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of U.S. society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power."
The major impact of EMP weapons is on electronics, "so pervasive in all aspects of our society and military, coupled through critical infrastructures," explained the report.
"Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the nation," Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission, told members of Congress.
The commission report went so far as to suggest, in its opening sentence, that an EMP attack "might result in the defeat of our military forces."
"Briefly, a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States will interact with the Earth's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field to produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiation down to the Earth and additionally create electrical currents in the Earth," said the report. "EMP effects are both direct and indirect. The former are due to electrical systems, and the latter arise from the damage that 'shocked' – upset, damaged and destroyed – electronics controls then inflict on the systems in which they are embedded. The indirect effects can be even more severe than the direct effects."
The EMP threat is not a new one considered by U.S. defense planners. The Soviet Union had experimented with the idea as a kind of super-weapon against the U.S.
"What is different now is that some potential sources of EMP threats are difficult to deter – they can be terrorist groups that have no state identity, have only one or a few weapons and are motivated to attack the U.S. without regard for their own safety," explains the commission report. "Rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, may also be developing the capability to pose an EMP threat to the United States and may also be unpredictable and difficult to deter."
Graham describes the potential "cascading effect" of an EMP attack. If electrical power is knocked out and circuit boards fried, telecommunications are disrupted, energy deliveries are impeded, the financial system breaks down, food, water and gasoline become scarce.
As Kyl put it: "Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order."
"American society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles' heel of vulnerability, ironically much greater than those of other, less developed nations," the senator wrote. "When deprived of power, we are in many ways helpless, as the New York City blackout made clear. In that case, power was restored quickly because adjacent areas could provide help. But a large-scale burnout caused by a broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment."
The commission said hardening key infrastructure systems and procuring vital backup equipment such as transformers is both feasible and – compared with the threat – relatively inexpensive.
"But it will take leadership by the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies, along with support from Congress, all of which have yet to materialize," wrote Kyl, so far the only elected official blowing the whistle this alarming development.
Kyl concluded in his report: "The Sept. 11 commission report stated that our biggest failure was one of 'imagination.' No one imagined that terrorists would do what they did on Sept. 11. Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we've been warned, and we'd better be prepared to respond."
Tehran, 2006:
Wow. just ONE bomb could wipe us out?
And don't claims like this justify WMD claims? We need to invade now!
Oops posted too soon. If only one bomb could do all this, why haven't all the other bad guys tried it?
Big talk from a bunch of guys who haven't even dug ONE nuke shelter.
Already posted
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390468/posts
Mike
This is such yang.
If they wanted to inflict maximum carnage and damage they would target my city. New York City.
They would never waste a nuclear weapon on such a far fetched unproven emthod of attacking a nation. Laying waste to NYC would create GLOBAL havoc and would do an incredible amount of damage to the US economy.
The Electromagnetic Pulse strategy to knock out the U.S. infrastructure may have been viable in 1980, but since then the military-industrial complex has developed "hardened" chips that can withstand such an attack. Dream on, Iran. You would be swatted like an mosquito.
It must be made clear to both Iran and North Korea in no uncertain terms or diplomatic niceties that the use of nuclear weapons against the US will bring an immediate massive nuclear retaliation on their country.
World Nut Daily
With a nuke, all you have to get is close...............
The mere fact that they have such a plan illustrates how crazy they are.
It will screw up all the non sheilded thingys with diodes and transisters. Like our cars, PCs, TVs, Media, Power grid et al. But the military hardware is all shielded and should not be effected.
I agree. You can't use a MAD concept on people who want to go to paradise.
It's time for the brains in the DOD to think of another way to stop the mullahs short of a reactive nuclear strike against Iran. If they can't come up with anything then all that's left is to make that piece of desert radioactive when they launch their "one" missile.
That would really tick off the liberal Dems, but this country would be safe.
I guess they are planning to nuke India.
"Detonated at a height of 60 to 500 kilometers above the continental U.S., one nuclear warhead could cripple the country – knocking out electrical power and circuit boards and rendering the U.S. domestic communications impotent. "
No it wouldn't, due to shielding standards and lack of blast radius. Stupid fear-mongering article lost all credibility there.
Just say "We want to attack Iran" and make up a lie and do it, instead of coming up with BS like this.
1. They shoot at us with there hand full of missiles.
2. We knock every one of them out with 10 fold redundancy, starting near the point of launch.
3. We retaliate and turn Iran into a nuclear waste dump.
It's not MAD! MAD assumes we both destroy each other.
Red6
"It will screw up all the non sheilded thingys with diodes and transisters. Like our cars...."
Ha! All the more reason to buy cars made in the 60's.
Even if the do damage us serverely, we have the boomers out to sea.
And we can fire weapons from land, sea, and air - that pretty much covers everything!
Wow. just ONE bomb could wipe us out?
Some of the military infastructure and most of us civilians would be affected by a BIG EMP like this. But we'd fire a few missiles back at them, and that would be end of that.
Oh. Never mind.
It has been
Only military electronics has been hardened sufficiently for this. EMP causes secondary emissions inside shielded devices. BTW cell phones aren't shielded at all. This would be a great way to get these out of the hands of drivers.
And – how far behind technologically they are. It might have worked 20 years ago.
Mutual Assured Destruction... Reagan believed in it and it worked.
…will be in Muslim heaven with their 72 beautiful and eternally young virgins…
If it were true then when we did all those surface and even above surface tests in the US and Pacific we should have shut down the Country right? But wait-it didn't happen.
China-above surface tests.
Russia-above surface tests.
France-above surface tests in the Pacific.
While we all know what EMP is, and agree that a nuke over the US would be really bad, I think the writer of this article thinks we are stupid. He's another one selling us a "nuclear winter"- "Ozone hole" or what's the trendy slogan now? I forget. "Acid Rain" Oh-that's long gone. Ahhh yea, it's "Global Warming" now.
Red6
Not to worry, automobile electronic fuel injector systems are nor sheilded, so no one will be driving anyway.
the antiwar protesters would be prevented from organizing to get their message out urging moderation, diplomatic solutions, and restrained response, and the talking heads would be forced into silence.
There's been enough talk going, it's time to act.
The DARPANET was created for this and most peripheral devices are "Tempest" versions to protect against this.
Not to split hairs, but Aegis wasn't built to intercept ICBM's. It was built to protect the carrier group from a missile flying right at it. But that is why we have the missile defense program. Screw those other countries who are against it.
Why do I feel like I'm part of a two minute hate here?
They could do this if they had a death wish.
Joseph Farah on Joseph Farah.
Submarines wouldn't be affected. Tehran would glow for 250 years.
"I think the writer of this article thinks we are stupid"
Agreed. Yet, HE is the one who looks like an idiot to me.
"I guess they are planning to nuke India."
LMAO! Outsourcing terrorist targets? Why not!?
Maybe the Iranians can hire some illegal Mexicans to "do this job that Americans won't do"?
Look up the effects of STARFISH PRIME and ARGUS shots. One over the Pacific and one over the Atlantic.
Both caused lots of EM effects, including disrupting phone service in Hawaii and blowing streetlights. Both not big bombs iirc.
Nobody has done much testing at the altitudes required for EMP because it is too difficult to monitor all the parameters you wish to look at when burning an expensive pit. You need to be 50 to 200 kilometers up and it's hard to find test shots higher than a few k.
Most EMP stuff has been theoretical and backed up by the limited test shots available.
Becasue the Dems and the anti-war luddites would say that an EMP wasn't a true nuclear attack so retaliation is not justified. Retaliation would be a violation of international law, violation of human rights because civillians in Iran would be harmed, etc.
If that wasn't enough, the worst wacko's would claim it was justified for the U.S. imperial hegemony's oppression of middle easterners since Sept. 11 and the U.S. deserves an attack.
These type of profane liberal talking points have been floating around for years. It would be funny though, for the liberal media talking heads on the alphabet networks to be totally frustrated that they couldn't be seen on TV spouting these comments after such an EMP.
they musta watched Ocean's 11 over the weekend.
I don't think it would work, but it would make a great movie.
Just add a few mutated flesh-eating zombies and we have a hit.
Did you ever read on the atmospheric tests our country did in the 50's? We knocked down a grid then and that was during the tube age. Tubes are a lot more resistant to EMP than solid state and even more so IC. It is possibly a real threat, albeit never done in wartime. Whether they can get a big enough pulse in the right area remains to be seen but it could be ugly though probably not the disaster they are talking here.
Tempest has to do with preventing collection of data and voice transmissions and securing communications from eavesdropping - not EMP hardening. DARPANET is not appreciably hardened, this is why we used to have VLF and groundwave comm. The size of the blast does not matter, it is the high altitude placement for max exposure to EMP. Also, most electrical grids and comm are not sufficiently hardened. This methodology has been a part of our strategic offensive planning for years.
I agree with you but would just like to point out the "blast radius" comment is irrelevant to the EMP effects.
The article is sophomoric - it fails on several levels. Not least of which is the fact ALL military-spec systems are impervious to EMP detonations but so are a lot of the major power and communication grids which use shielded Faraday cages and easily-replacable breakers. The ongoing transformation to fiber optics is making these systems much more resistant to EMP effects. Thus, most power and communication networks will be restored within several days at the most and perhaps within just several hours.
Basically, the only long-lasting effect will be on common household goods and motor vehicles. That should make all Americans, including the leftists and Democrats, sufficiently pissed off to approve of complete nuking of Iran.
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