WarSclerotic

Inside Israel’s (Possible) Strike on Iran | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/how-would-israe/#ixzz0j5OWE2Tj

It’s time to play the war card | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

Everyone has suddenly noticed an elephant in the room: Play the War Card! So right after Daniel Pipes’ column in National Review Online last week, “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran,” pundits from Arnaud de Borchgrave, to Pat Buchanan, to Sarah Palin rushed to approve or disapprove of the idea. They all bring their agendas to the debate, but they all agree a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would significantly raise Obama’s disastrous approval poll ratings. Like politics, all warfare is domestic.

Even with the issue finally out in the sunlight, questions remain like: Why attack Iran when sanctions and ballistic missile defenses are available? Would an attack be effective anyway, and what about the Muslim response? Examination of those key points is timely.

First, no serious observer doubts Iran’s intentions except Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who told Congress last week he did not know whether Iran has decided to produce nuclear weapons. Although this has been the posture of the Bush and Obama administrations for years, officials now publically concede that Tehran’s huge uranium enrichment program is designed to build nuclear weapons. In addition, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung just reported that with the help of a Russian expert in advanced warhead design, Iran is developing a nuclear warhead small enough to fit in their Shahab 3 intercontinental ballistic missile. The paper added that Western intelligence agencies and diplomats confirmed the report; other reports suggest Iran already has a warhead but it is too large for their missile.

Whatever the status of Iran’s program, the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu gave a thinly veiled warning to Iran on Jan. 27 (Holocaust Memorial Day) saying, “From this site, I vow as the leader of the Jewish state that we will never again allow the hand of evil to destroy the life of our people and the life of our state. Never again!”

Tempo increased with a statement on Feb. 9 by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that his country would “punch” the western powers during the annual celebration of the revolution on Thursday, Feb. 11. He said: “The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (western powers) on the 22^nd of Bahman (11 February) in a way that will leave them stunned.” (Agence France-Presse).

What might that “punch” be? If Iran tests a nuclear device the calculus of terror in the Middle East changes dramatically, and things will surely happen on several fronts. Such a test is unlikely, however, and the “punch” is probably some new conventional armament. Nevertheless, Iran’s promise to wipe Israel off the face of the earth would spur that nation to action should Iran demonstrate a nuclear arsenal. And Israel is not the only concerned Middle East nation. A nuclear arms race is already under way in the region and would accelerate. The purchase of Pakistani nuclear weapons by Shiite Iran’s fearful Sunni neighbors cannot be ruled out.

With China refusing to endorse an embargo on gasoline sales to Iran, and with Russia dragging its feet, the peaceful option of sanctions is a dead horse. Ineffectual promises of sanctions and vague threats were hallmarks of the Bush presidency. To that Obama has only added lapsed deadlines and the offer of ballistic missile defenses (BMD) to Iran’s neighbors. Why does Washington follow such failed policies? The answer is that a nuclear-armed Iran is a distant threat to the United States, and even if Iran somehow landed a missile on American soil we would absorb the blow and completely incinerate them. So Washington delays action, counsels patience, and hopes that something will happen soon—even if that something is an Iranian nuclear capability. Israel does not have the luxury of distance or land mass, and a single Iranian nuclear missile slipping through the Aegis or Patriot BMD systems would be a catastrophe. Into this mix comes the debate of whether or not American military action against Iran would bolster poll standings of president Obama. I believe U.S. military action is a moot point, since there is absolutely nothing to indicate that Obama would consider playing the war card.

White House meetings on the subject of Iran must be interesting. If we attack Iran we face a tsunami of condemnation while Islamic leaders whip the ‘Muslim Street’ into a frenzy. Terror attacks on Americans will take place here and abroad. And if Israel attacks Iran instead, we will be named a co-conspirator and face the same tidal wave. Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. Meanwhile, the military ball is in Israel’s court.

The world knows the U.S. military can destroy any target in the world without using nuclear weapons. But what about Israel? That country, with a population less than that of New York City, has developed a “triad”—the capability to launch a nuclear strike from aircraft, missile silos, and submarines. Besides Israel, only the US, Russia, and China have that deterrent power. But would Israel use nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike on Iran? I suggest that is unlikely because, as we will see below, it is unnecessary in the usual sense. As for a non-nuclear pre-emptive strike, Israel cannot successfully attack Iran with conventional weapons or aircraft. The distance is great, the defenses formidable, and the casualties would be very high. Instead, I believe Israel will use an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon. What’s that?

In 1962 the U.S. conducted an atmospheric test called Starfish Prime. In it, a 1.4 megaton weapon was detonated 400 kilometers above Johnson Island in the Pacific. The EMP from that test knocked out street lights in Hawaii, 900 miles away! The Soviets held similar tests and discovered EMP effects can penetrate far underground. If Israel used one of its Jericho III missiles to detonate 400 kilometers above north central Iran there would be no blast or radiation effects on the ground. In fact, if the strike was at noon on a sunny day the people below would not know it happened except their lights would go out, cars stop, fridges die, power line transformers short out, refineries shut down, and yes, those uranium enrichment centrifuges in caverns stop spinning. This bloodless annihilation, coupled with a selective cyber attack, would freeze Iran for decades.

What could be Iran’s response to such an attack? If they can find a working radio they can announce they have mined the Strait of Hormuz. Because of depth, width, and its hydrographic features the Strait cannot be mined, but if Iran says it is mined it would have the same effect. Lloyds will cancel insurance for any tanker transiting the Strait. Then we revisit “Tanker War” tactics of 1985, and the U.S. Navy would escort any ship anxious to cash in on the crisis. If shore missile batteries were somehow still operational, a battle group in the area together with bombers from Diego Garcia would reduce them to rubble, along with associated infrastructure like military harbors. A rain of missiles from Hezbollah in Syria would have to be endured by Israel, unless another EMP weapon was used. Terror attacks would be made on Israelis and Americans, but those can be dealt with by law enforcement and military forces, especially if they are forewarned. Of course the price of oil and gold would spike for a while. On the positive side, Iranian “Green” opposition forces would have an opportunity to take to the darkened streets of Tehran and rid themselves of the corrupt clerical regime.

So it seems the “war card” is in the hands of Israel, and the card has “EMP” on it.

EMP: What Obama and Netanyahu Should Be Talking About – HUMAN EVENTS.

Mr. Hannaford was closely associated with former President Reagan for a number of years. His latest book is Ronald Reagan and His Ranch: The Western White House, 1981-1989.

Tech apocalypse: Five doomsday scenarios for IT ( – IT Management ).

Though most commonly associated with nuclear explosions, you don’t need a nuke to create an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to do serious damage. EMP devices emit extremely high-frequency signals that fry electronics to a crisp, rendering them useless. An EMP will also wipe out or corrupt any data not stored on magnetic or optical devices. Worse, EMPs are largely untraceable, because the weapon itself destroys any evidence of its use.

A van with an EMP device in the back could effectively shut down big chunks of the U.S. economy simply by driving down Wall Street with the signal turned up, says Gale Nordling, CEO of Emprimus, a company that helps enterprises protect against threats from non-nuclear EMP.

If you wanted to take out the entire continent, though, you’d need a nuke and a missile delivery system. “One bomb exploded 300 miles over Kansas could take out most of the electronics in the United States,” says Nordling.

What could happen: Workstations? Dead. Data centers? Gone. Cell phones might still work, but the cell towers probably won’t, rendering them useless. Your car won’t start. A large enough attack will also shut down automated controls at power substations, leaving everyone in the dark. Think pre-industrial revolution days. In our scenario the New York Stock Exchange shuts down, causing shock waves to reverberate throughout worldwide markets.

How long to recover: How long it takes organizations to bounce back depends on how serious they were about disaster recovery before hell broke loose. Backup power generators, fuel supplies, alternative work facilities, redundant data centers in multiple locations, and a well-rehearsed plan for making it all work together are the key elements to disaster recovery, says Richard Rees, security solution director for disaster recovery and business continuity specialists

The American Spectator : Thinking About Bombing Iran.

By George H. Wittman on 3.19.10 @ 6:07AM

According to an article in the Financial Times, “Do Not Even Think About Bombing Iran” by Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel, both of the Brookings Institution, “the strike option” on Iranian nuclear facilities “lacks credibility.” The authors believe that this is so because of “Iran’s ability to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan…” This logic, like much else in this anti-war polemic posing as analysis, just doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

It would have been far better if O’Hanlon/Riedel admitted from the beginning that they, like the Obama Administration, have no stomach for an attack on a murderous, ambition-crazed, self-perpetuating and self-justifying theocracy in the Middle East that seeks to dominate the region. Instead the authors prefer to present unsupported arguments such as, “… even a massive strike would not slow Iran’s progress toward a bomb for long.”

What militarily and technically inaccurate pap! For some reason O’Hanlon/Riedel seem to believe that operational nuclear weapon and development sites are actually capable of being hidden from counteraction. They present as evidence the fact that the media discovered a new nuclear development site in Qom last year. Digging in the middle of a major city can’t be seen on the ground or by satellite, eh?

Obviously these authors — and other liberal Washington pundits — are thinking only in conventional weapon terms in relation to any attack on Iranian nuclear weapon facilities. There is no reason for such a limitation. There are a panoply of classified exotic systems currently available to disrupt and destroy any and all Iranian attack modes, nuclear or not. The claim that O’Hanlon/Riedel make that “Iran can rebuild fairly fast…” is again based on a perception that only conventional weapons would be available for use in the current international political context.

The FT column argues that President Obama would not militarily attack Iran because he is bound by “his effort to recast the U.S. as a country playing by international legal norms.” Here is where O’Hanlon/Riedel may be completely correct. Obama has shown very little stomach for directly countering military threats. He certainly will stretch out as long as possible the program of sanctions along with diplomatic threats.

A key point in the O’Hanlon/Riedel argument is that Iran has already supported terrorist attacks and proxy wars on Israel and the United States. They contend that the danger of Iranian nuclear weapon buildup is lessened by the fact that Tehran has done quite well in its efforts at conventional and irregular warfare. Suggesting that Iran shouldn’t waste time pursuing nuclear weapons when it’s already doing so well with terrorists and surrogate forces doesn’t seem to hold much potential.

The O’Hanlon/Riedel commentary neglects to consider Israel’s unilateral capability to defend itself whenever it perceives imminent danger from Iran. The article offers the suggestion: “We should also pledge to provide a nuclear umbrella over Israel and other threatened states.” The authors ignore this protection has been implicit in the Middle East, and elsewhere, for decades.

It is also possible, however, to consider the use of the currently highly classified weapons mentioned earlier. Certain of these weapons are already available and could be utilized at a point when Iran is seen to have created its first nuclear-armed missile or just before. These capabilities should be emphasized more. The perspective would be improved.

Among the best known would be the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon that might be detonated at an altitude up to 400km in salvos above a central Iranian target set. This action effectively would disable all electricity-dependent instruments from automobiles to home appliances and on to missile batteries and even deep underground facilities (as discovered by the Russians years ago in their own test firings).

Ultimately all power grids throughout the targeted areas in Iran would be shorted out for hundreds of miles. There would be no need for selective targeting other than to avoid “spill-over” into non-Iranian border regions. The details of such range and target control mechanisms remain some of the most highly sensitive and thus of the strictest classification.

To compliment and supplement the EMP barrage there would be a massive computer hacking effort before and during the attack. This cyber offensive pulverizing Tehran’s tactical command and control systems reportedly has been gamed successfully on several occasions — again highly classified. The combination of the two attacks is believed to be able effectively to bring Iran to a standstill.

Defense consultant Chet Nagle, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and author of the acclaimed work, Iran Covenant, characterized the overall effect: “In fact, if the strike [EMP] was at noon on a sunny day, the people below would not know it happened except their lights would go out, cars would stop, fridges die, power line transformers short out, oil refineries shut down, and those uranium enrichment centrifuges in caverns would stop spinning.”

Such an action would immobilize Iran and allow conventional U.S. sea and air forces time to attack the already degraded Iranian coastal defense, thus preventing the closing of the Straits of Hormuz. Such a scenario supports the fact that the issue is not whether Iran can be shut down, but whether the Obama Administration would have the will to do so.

The Iranians and O’Hanlon/Riedel are betting against American will. The Israelis may agree with them, but such a view only further insures an Israeli preemptive strike. So perhaps it might be better if we did talk about — “bombing” Iran!

What America Needs to Know About EMPs – By Peter Pry | Foreign Policy.

[Joseph Wouk comments:  It is my belief that Israel’s attack on the Iranian nuclear program is likely to consist of a preliminary EMP attack which will cause no casualties, followed by a prolonged conventional air and cruise missile attack to completely eliminate all known nuclear facilities.]

The threat of an electromagnetic attack is real, but preparing for one shouldn’t be too difficult.

BY PETER VINCENT PRY | MARCH 17, 2010

In her article “The Boogeyman Bomb,” Sharon Weinberger makes several allegations about the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and a congressional commission set up to investigate it, that require correction.

By way of background, a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude will produce an electromagnetic pulse that can damage and destroy electronic systems over vast regions of the Earth’s surface. A single nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the United States would project an EMP field over the entire country, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. Mother Nature can also pose an EMP threat by means of a solar flare that causes a geomagnetic storm.

EMP is not just a threat to computers and electronic gadgets, but to all the critical infrastructures that depend on electronics and electricity — communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water — and that sustain modern civilization and the lives of the American people.

In 2008, the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack delivered its final report to Congress, the Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. The commission concluded that terrorist groups, rogue states, China, and Russia are theoretically capable of launching a catastrophic EMP attack against the United States and either had contingency plans to do so or were actively pursuing the ability. Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia have scientific and military research programs dedicated to or supportive of EMP capability, and their military doctrinal writings explicitly describe EMP attacks against the United States.

Based on eight years of research and analysis, 50 years of data from nuclear tests and EMP simulators, and never-before-attempted EMP tests, the commission found that any nuclear weapon, even a low-yield one, could potentially pose a catastrophic EMP threat to the United States, mainly because of the great fragility of the electric grid. One scenario of particular concern is a nuclear-armed Iran transferring a short- or medium-range nuclear missile to terrorist groups that could perform a ship-launched “anonymous” EMP attack against the United States. Iranian military strategists have written about EMP attacks against the United States, and Iran has successfully practiced launching a ballistic missile off a ship and flight-tested its Shahab-3 medium-range missile to detonate at high altitude, as if practicing an EMP attack.

The commission also noted credible Russian claims that they had developed what the Russians call “super-EMP” weapons — low-yield nuclear weapons specially designed to generate extraordinarily powerful EMP fields — and that the Russian Duma had raised the prospect of a disabling EMP attack against the United States during NATO’s bombing of Serbia in May 1999.

The EMP Commission also, in the first such preview by any official body, warned that a “great” geomagnetic storm could be as catastrophic as a nuclear EMP attack — and that this naturally occurring EMP event is inevitable. Normally, geomagnetic storms occur at high northern latitudes, not over the United States, and usually are not sufficiently powerful to cause catastrophic damage. But every hundred years or so, a “great” geomagnetic storm occurs that could cause catastrophic damage to electronics — and the infrastructures that rely upon them — over much of the Northern Hemisphere. The world has not experienced a great geomagnetic storm since the advent of the electronic age, not since the Carrington event of 1859 — but many scientists think we are overdue. A great geomagnetic storm could generate an EMP covering the United States equivalent to the high-altitude detonation of a very powerful megaton-class nuclear weapon.

Weinberger accuses the EMP Commission of deliberately “exaggerating the capabilities of a potential EMP attack.” This is a serious allegation, as deliberately misrepresenting the facts about the EMP threat would constitute an ethical and legal violation. As evidence, Weinberger offers the opinion of Philip Coyle of the Center for Defense Information. Whatever Coyle’s opinion may be, he is no authority on the commission’s work and has participated in none of it. In any case, even he only accuses the EMP Commission of using “inflammatory language” but not of misrepresenting facts.

As a member of the EMP Commission’s staff, I can assure the public that the EMP commissioners adhered to the highest standards of professionalism and scientific objectivity. If the findings of the EMP Commission sound alarming, it is because they are. The EMP commissioners did their duty and followed the data. The EMP Commission’s threat assessment and recommendations represent the best work so far produced by the United States on EMP and is the best-informed basis for national security policy.

The EMP Commission’s conclusions were also backed up by the findings of another congressional commission, this one chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry. Their 2009 report independently concluded that terrorists, rogue states, China, and Russia could pose an EMP threat to the United States and advocated immediate implementation of the EMP Commission’s recommendations. The National Academy of Sciences has also urged implementation of the EMP Commission’s recommendations.

Are all of these commissions and blue-ribbon scientific studies a conspiracy to “hype” the EMP threat?

Weinberger correctly observes that there “has long been debate about just how devastating an EMP weapon would be on the United States.” This is exactly why Congress established the EMP Commission, after five years of congressional hearings on EMP that produced no consensus about the threat. There will always be individuals who disagree with any commission’s findings — no matter that the methodology, research, and analysis are excellent — just as there are those who disagree with the 9/11 Commission, the weapons-of-mass-destruction commission, the Warren Commission, or any other commission.

Weinberger alleges that the EMP Commission and concern about the EMP threat is strictly partisan. But the EMP Commission’s bipartisan credentials are impeccable. It was established by a Republican-dominated Congress in 2001 and re-established by a Democrat-dominated Congress in 2006. Commissioners were appointed on a bipartisan basis. The EMP threat, and the necessity to do something about it, is one of the few issues on which Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together.

Weinberger asks why nuclear terrorists or rogue states would prefer to use a nuclear weapon for an EMP attack, instead of blasting a city. The short answer is that an EMP attack could inflict more and longer-lasting damage and kill many more Americans in the long run. Blasting a city cannot paralyze the United States and will leave forensic and other evidence that will virtually guarantee the destruction of the perpetrator. An EMP attack is the only option for a single nuclear weapon that offers terrorists or rogue states any realistic chance of defeating the United States, perhaps eliminating the United States as an actor from the world stage, permanently.

As to Weinberger’s complaints that Newt Gingrich and others concerned about the EMP threat sometimes recommend to popular audiences the novel One Second After, which describes a hypothetical EMP attack on the United States: Since Uncle Tom‘s Cabin there has been a venerable tradition in U.S. democracy of educating and building popular support for causes through novels. Her disgust would be more credible if she criticized with equal vigor the many novels and movies designed to raise popular concern about climate change.

Weinberger cites New Republic senior editor Michael Crowley as an example of a critic of the EMP Commission. Crowley is indeed a typical critic of the EMP Commission — he knows nothing about EMP and obviously never bothered to read the EMP Commission’s reports. Crowley alleges in his article “The Newt Bomb” that the EMP Commission is really a conspiracy to promote national missile defense and preventive war against Iran. Both claims are untrue, as is evident from the EMP Commission’s recommendations, which focus on passive defense of critical infrastructures.

Far from “hyping” the EMP threat, in its reports and public testimony, the commission went to great lengths to emphasize that there is no excuse for the United States to be vulnerable to nuclear or natural EMP and that the country can protect itself with a little effort and very modest investment. Most of our recommendations are common-sense solutions — good planning, training, selective hardening — that have universal applicability against other threats, including cyberwarfare, sabotage, and natural disasters. According to one estimate, the worst consequences of an EMP event could be avoided for as little as $100 million, by selectively protecting key transformers in the electric grid. Unlike other weapon-of-mass-destruction threats, which apparently will always be with us, the EMP Commission offered a way to put the EMP threat out of business.

World Report.

RUSSIA, CHINA SEEK IRAN’S CO-OPERATION

UNITED NATIONS – Russia and China have quietly made clear to the Iranian government they want Tehran to change its approach to the nuclear issue and accept a UN atomic fuel offer, Western diplomats said Tuesday.

Russia’s and China’s co-ordinated diplomatic approaches took place in Tehran around the beginning of March, according to several Western UN Security Council diplomats.

Russian frustration with Iran has been growing since Tehran snubbed a UN nuclear watchdog plan under which the Iranians would ship most of their low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment and processing into fuel assemblies for a Tehran reactor for medical isotopes.

Chinese Ministry of National Defense Spokesperson Visits Israel.

Senior Colonel Xueping will be visiting Sderot and areas surrounding the Gaza Strip, as well as various units of the IDF. Additionally, he will be presented with the public-relations lessons learnt during the Second Lebanon War and during Operation Cast Lead.

The Spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense and the Chinese Military, Senior Colonel Huang Xueping, arrived in Israel on Sunday (Feb. 21) for a four-day visit, as the personal guest of the IDF Spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu. The Deputy Chief of the PLA’s Television Network, a Colonel from the News Affairs Bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Defense, will also be accompanying Senior Colonel Huang Xueping.

During their visit, Senior Colonel Huang Xueping and his accompanying staff will hear briefings by professional sources from within the IDF Spokesperson Unit about public-relations work during both routine and emergency times. The Chinese delegation will be presented with the public-relations lessons learnt during the Second Lebanon War and during Operation Cast Lead. Additionally, they will learn about the IDF School for Media’s training system and the integration of spokesmanship and operational planning. Senior Colonel Huang Xueping will present the professional aspects of the Chinese Military’s spokesmanship to his Israeli hosts.

The delegation will visit the city of Sderot and the southern communities surrounding the Gaza Strip in order to understand the public-relations challenges regarding the security situation in the area. The guests will be briefed on the IDF activity in the area by the Commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg and on the daily routine of the area by the Mayor of Sderot. The delegation is also due to visit other military units and will be briefed on the IDF’s activity in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on the quality of life of the Palestinian population and the media-related issues that are dealt with on a daily basis.

In addition, the members of the Chinese delegation will visit the Army Radio station in Jaffa, the IDF newspaper (Bamahane) and the Home Front Command training base where they will hear about the accomplishments of the Israeli Search and Rescue Aid Delegation in Haiti. Moreover, the delegation will meet with many other Israeli professionals from the public-relations and spokesmanship field.

Senior Colonel Huang Xueping and his staff will visit Jerusalem and tour the Western Wall and the “Yad Vashem” Museum. During his visit in “Yad Vashem” he will place a wreath of flowers in memory of the victims of the Holocaust in an official ceremony.

Chief of Staff: “Hamas unconcerned that the area is heating up”.