Israel is prepared to unleash a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) against Iran sometime this fall
Presidential Polls, Israel, and Iran’s Nuclear Ambition.
( Breitbart is an extreme right wing journal. – JW )
Breitbart
As the Romney-Ryan ticket inches ahead in the polls, one of the little noticed implications just may be the avoidance, at least for a time, of World War III.
World War III? How does that work?
According to high-level U.S. intelligence sources, Israel will likely unilaterally launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities and is basing the timing of that strike, in part, on the U.S. presidential election. Sources say Israel is more likely to consider delaying the strike until spring if they are optimistic that there will be a leadership change in Washington.
An article in the Israeli National News in early August suggested that the Israeli political and military leadership, in order to put Tehran’s experiments with atomic playthings out of business, is prepared to unleash a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) against Iran sometime this fall by exploding a nuclear device high above the Iranian desert. Such a strike would send intense electromagnetic radiation over as much as 1,000 square miles, frying Iran’s electrical grid and bring its oil business, transportation, defense capabilities and most everything else that operates electronically to a grinding halt.
Nobody would be injured, radiation would stay in the stratosphere, and the Iranians wouldn’t know anything had happened until they flipped on the lights. In short order, food supplies would be consumed and would perish; all forms of communications would be out of business; transportation would stop; and the country would undergo economic collapse. That would just be the collateral damage. The real benefit, for Israel, would be that Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges would be frozen solid for years to come.
An added benefit? Retaliation by Iran would be minimal, as its airplanes would be grounded, missiles stuck in their silos, even military vehicles rendered useless. Of course, Israel would likely be attacked by Iran’s non-state proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, but sources that are familiar with Israeli defenses say they could defend themselves against such attacks to a great extent, and damage would be controllable.
Israel would certainly count on its closest ally for support in defending itself against such an attack – another reason why it might be more likely to strike before the US election. To ensure continued support from Jewish donors and voters, Obama would be hard-pressed to deny support to Israel shortly before November 6.
It would be a first, all right – the first nuclear strike since August, 1945, the first to start a war, and the first time an Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon has departed science fiction and entered reality.
Washington intelligence hands experienced in Mid East politics tell me that this is no pipe dream.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, barring some miraculous about face on the part of the regime in Tehran, are prepared to take the unilateral decision to launch a strike. And sources say an Israeli strike would not end with the EMP:
For lasting effect, I believe there will be a decapitation aspect to the target set: not just the political leadership but also the scientific community and the command structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). If the Israelis can manage to find a series of individual cars in the midst of rush hours in various cities and put limpets on them to blow up particular scientists, they can find the houses where they live and strike them. Cutting off the heads of lots of snakes.
The Israelis are famous for being as creative as anybody in their understanding of warfare and use of innovative techniques. A 1980s bombing raid, in other words, is no longer the go-to weapon in the country’s arsenal; instead look for multiple tactics, from special operations and undercover attacks, cyber warfare, industrial sabotage to unexpected explosions and unexplained accidents.
But back to those Obama-Romney polls. Netanyahu doesn’t trust Obama and is convinced that if Obama is re-elected Israel will be in for very tough times—if it will even survive—and that the US would do little or nothing to prevent Iran from arming itself with nukes. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November.” So if it looks like Obama is pulling ahead in the polls, off goes the Israeli Jericho III missile and boom goes its 750kg nuclear device.
The matter was exacerbated last week when the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog of nuclear activity in Iran, reported that Tehran has doubled the number of centrifuges churning out nuclear fuel in bunkers far below the ground over the past year despite pressure from the West. And suspicion of Tehran’s intentions only increases as it continues to deny UN inspectors into its nuclear sites.
Israel recognizes, according to Ilan Berman, Vice President of the right-leaning American Foreign Policy Council and an expert on Israel-Iranian relations, that it is now on its own, and that if it is going to interfere with Tehran’s nuclear intentions it will have to do so itself. Further, says Berman, Israeli politicians are realistic enough to know that whatever they do, they are unlikely to shut Tehran’s nuclear program down – or diminish Iran’s nuclear ambitions — but will more likely delay the venture for an undetermined number of years.
It is during that window, while Iran rebuilds whatever the Israelis destroyed, that they think they’d get more help from a Republican Administration in Washington than from Obama.
So, according to one of my US intelligence sources, “while the digital age may have rendered moon phases obsolete, my old training still has me paying attention to dark nights – try the moonless 15-17th of both September and October. But who knows?”
Mr. Regnery is the former President of Regnery Publishing, was Publisher of The American Spectator, and served in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department.
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WarSclerotic 
September 10, 2012 at 5:13 PM
Very good. Especially here :
”A 1980s bombing raid, in other words, is no longer the go-to weapon in the country’s arsenal…”.
That is exactly what we said all along, the last our comments included.
September 10, 2012 at 5:36 PM
NUCLEAR EMP 40 years out of date,the EMP weapon is none nuclear and it wont just be 1 it will be multiples,and then theres the sustained decapitation campaign,There will be no recovery for iran just back to the Jurassic age never mind the stone age,and then theres irans other enemy’s who despise iran more than Israel,what there saying is when Israels finished they will just be starting
September 10, 2012 at 5:42 PM
JFI… Just so you understand, we don’t despise Iran. They were good friends of ours till the mullahs took over. I hope they will be again soon.
September 10, 2012 at 6:08 PM
…So were the germans very good friends of ours till Hitler took over.
Hmm…interesting. Today, the iranians are yelling ” death to Israel ” and the germans were barking ” juden raus ”(” jews, go out” or ”leave”).
I am just wandering how much love some people have for us if on the first occasion – by a regime change – they are starting to show their true faces. And one more very important detail : the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the Nazi Party taking over were results of the ”people’s will” in both countries. It took Germany about 20 years for the denazification to take place. It will take more than one bomb for the shiites clerics to go to hell.
September 11, 2012 at 4:05 PM
Stop thinking this is just about israel it is about the prevalence of western values and the 100 year plan,it is our way of ousting the Chinese and Russians its a bigger game,we believe Israel is the key to this,Iran is a ant the bigger fish are the real problem,Israels problems are stopping us advancing our agenda,there are two camps,one camp wants to trow israel to the wolves and move on,the other our camp is sworn to protect israel at all costs,,we dont hate iran just its ideals
September 10, 2012 at 6:13 PM
“…radiation would stay in the stratosphere…” Not sure about this one. What goes up must come down.
September 10, 2012 at 6:19 PM
Not so, Steve. Look up EMP on Wikipedia.
September 10, 2012 at 8:17 PM
Hmmm…non nuclear, eh? Interesting.
September 10, 2012 at 6:17 PM
Luis, I hear you.
At the same time, I reject your conclusions though I find them emotionally satisfying.
You bring up the Germans. I can’t hear German spoken without jumping for cover. And yet, without the Germans Israel would have no nuclear capable submarines.
The Iranian revolution was stolen by the mullahs the same way the Russian revolution was stolen by the Bolsheviks.
Remove the military power from the IRG and the true, more decent Iranian center will return.
September 10, 2012 at 7:28 PM
Joe, I won’t argue with the good points you made.
My point is, we are not so popular in the world, we never were and we never will be.
September 10, 2012 at 6:52 PM
Reblogged this on BPI reblog and commented:
Interesting idea.
September 10, 2012 at 7:43 PM
Agreed, Luis. All the more reason to take advantage of whatever modicum of relationship that the goim give us. Beggars can’t be etc….
September 10, 2012 at 8:29 PM
1000 square miles above Iranian desert ????!!!!!!
Nobody lives in the whole Iranian desert covering hundreds of thousands square miles, and hence no electric or electronic device can be found there.
Perhaps the figure given in the article is wrong.
September 10, 2012 at 9:42 PM
“Retaliation by Iran would be minimal,…” NOT
Sure, in a few weeks or months, most Iranians will forget that Israel fried every electronic circuit in the country and totally destroyed its infrastructure and main industry. In addition, since they are no longer able to export oil they are poorer than church mice. I think they will find creative ways to retaliate and Israel will be in for a very long war. Even if the Green Revolution takes over the government Iran will retaliate.
September 11, 2012 at 7:21 AM
Norm, this is war. Retaliations are a part of it. So is victory.
And to be more specifics, we can remind here that Iran is ” retailing ” against us all the time, by sponsored terror and arming its shiite militia in Lebanon; they are our arch foe and the conflict with those shiite clerics is far beyond their nuclear aspirations.
Todays’s Iran and Israel cannot coexist here, in this region, in the actual political and ideological constellation that rules Iran.
They want a war. They will get one.
September 10, 2012 at 10:08 PM
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-6381734.html
That’s the start of a 1998 Jerusalem Post article claiming the Iranians bought themselves some nukes from the former USSR.
Suppose that for a moment there is some truth to the story. That they’ve got somewhere between one and four functioning devices. (this would, by the way, explain how Iran is enriching uranium like crazy, but aren’t bothering to design any weapons. It’s because they don’t need to.)
Israel pops off one or more high-altitude bursts over Iran. What happens if Iran sends back an identical reply? Paraphrasing now,
“Nobody would be injured, radiation would stay in the stratosphere, and the Israelis wouldn’t know anything had happened until they flipped on the lights. In short order, food supplies would be consumed and would perish; all forms of communications would be out of business; transportation would stop; and the country would undergo ….”
What will happen in Israel if most or all of their wonderful high-tech stuff stops working? Besides the starvation and all that? There are, after all, lots of unhappy people in Gaza. And on the West Bank. Quite a few unfriendly neighbors too, or so I’ve heard.
The lunatics who rule the place may be on their way to finding out the answer to the question.
September 11, 2012 at 7:14 AM
Just one factor missing from your equation, Zach, and that’s the fact we Jews are up against enemies who are as a matter of principle bent on our inihilation and will definitely attack sooner or later, which leaves us no real option. Let them change their attitude and there will be no war here.
Hence the futility of lame scare tactics….
September 11, 2012 at 1:14 PM
You worry too much, Zachary Smith. The shiite clerics still don’t have the capability to deliver such a nuclear payload to Israel.
And the IDF will take care that they will never get that, either.
And yes, we have ” wonderful high-tech stuff ” and it will keep on working. Don’t worry.
September 11, 2012 at 6:14 PM
Back in 1962 the US used a Thor IRBM to propel a w49 warhead 250 miles high for the Starfish test. According to the wiki, that warhead weighed in at under 1700 pounds. The Shahab wiki says it’ll carry 2200 pounds for 1200 miles, so if a hypothetical Russian warhead 25 years newer than the w49 isn’t any heavier, “getting there” isn’t a problem. After all, from western Iran to Israel is less than 900 miles. As for destroying the Iranian warhead, I haven’t heard of anybody planning to shoot at targets positioned higher than the International Space Station. Even if the available weapons are lots smaller than the w49, that’s not necessarily a problem. The Russian ‘K Project’ reportedly had much heavier EMP produced from a 300kt weapon at only 180 miles altitude. And the EMP wiki says even itty-bitty weapons can produce some really nasty results.
*** Hence, small pure fission weapons with thin cases are far more efficient at causing EMP than most megaton bombs. ***
So even if the Iranians have only a few little artillery shells with a yield of 30-40kt, that’s all they need.
As for Iran actually possessing any Russian nukes, I wouldn’t know about that. It’s either true or it’s not. Still, things WERE in chaos back when the USSR was collapsing, and who knows what happened in those southern districts of the country.
September 10, 2012 at 11:08 PM
Is anyone familiar with the carbon graphite smart bombs in IDFs arsenal? Nato used them to knock out half of Serbia’s electricity in 1990 and I believe killed very few lives. The graphite makes a mess of the power stations.
September 11, 2012 at 3:48 PM
Luis,
I totally support the destruction of the Iranian nuclear facilities by military means. I also don’t think we should stick our heads in the sand believing that their retaliation will be “minimal”.
That is all I meant to say.
Best regards,
Norm
September 11, 2012 at 10:17 PM
Agreed.