Unequalled Malevolence

"Experts: Iran Now a Nuclear-Ready State, Missiles Capable of Hitting US"

"Regardless of intelligence uncertainties and unknowns about Iran's nuclear weapons and missile programs, we know enough now to make a prudent judgment that Iran should be regarded by national security decision makers as a nuclear missile state capable of posing an existential threat to the United States and its allies...The fact of Iran's ICBM capability and their proximity to nuclear weapons necessitates that Iran be regarded as a nuclear missile state—right now."

Newsmax report

 

"Terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or military base, they may obtain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them — or threatening their use — in an EMP attack."

EMP Commission

"Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States."

Dr. William R. Graham, Chairman, Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

 

 

"By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian Parliament had previously warned [the U.S.] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans."

Iranian state-controlled Afkar News 

It is a disastrous potential scenario whose magnitude of destruction is simply unimaginable. Unimaginable as well is the very concept of any country's national head making such a fateful decision as to launch an utterly destructive, desolate attack on another country with the dire potential of an electromagnetic nuclear pulse that would in theory and in practise instantly and entirely annihilate a nation's power grid along with any form of energy distribution, affecting industrial, municipal, military functioning completely.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

When a nuclear explosion takes place, an invisible burst of gamma rays is emitted, a form of light born of the "hottest and most energetic objects in the universe", as NASA puts it, a small fraction of the bomb's yield which smash into air molecules, knock out electrons and accelerate negatively charged particles to around 90% of the speed of light.

Many of the high-speed electrons are shuttled toward Earth's poles by its magnetic field which the electrons respond to by releasing their new energy as a soup of powerful electromagnetic radiation, causing a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, which occurs within a fraction of a microsecond -- the surge of energy capable of overloading (shocking) sensitive electronic devices of the type civilization is heavily reliant on in the operation of just about anything and everything.

Under the influence of that pulse, trains would stop instantly, motor vehicles as well, and planes would simply fall from the sky. As the electromagnetic pulse passes through phones, computers, radios, they 'catch' the powerful pulse generating a rogue current of electricity which then moves instantly through those devices' tiny circuits, disrupting and destroying them. Similarly on a macro scale, electric power grid systems responsible for heat, electricity and water transmission,would simply fail. The excess current can spark and fail for miles around as power transmission and telecommunications equipment overload.

Everything would instantly come to a halt through the massively disruptive electromagnetic waves. As massively destructive as a nuclear detonation hitting the ground can be, nuclear detonations occurring at vast heights measured in hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth could have grotesquely devastating consequences compared to those that happen on the ground. In 2008, the EMP Commission released a report suggesting that a powerful nuclear device detonated at the right altitude could shower the entire continental US in EMP, entirely and catastrophically disrupting telecommunications and power grid infrastructure.

Photo: Public Domain

The published speculation of the Iranian regime-sponsored newspaper that referred to such an event succeeding in killing 90 percent of the U.S. population, in a casual matter-of-fact statement of potential accomplishment at a future date, may have received its information from the Congressional EMP Commission report itself, which estimated that, given U.S. current unpreparedness, within one year of an EMP attack that might cause a nationwide blackout, two-thirds or more -- up to 90 percent -- of the U.S. population could perish from starvation, disease and societal collapse.

The release in 2017 of an official Iranian textbook meant for military educational purposes dating from 2010, endorses deception measures meant to conceal the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons research. It also speaks of a nuclear EMP attack against the United States. Clearly, both features are in direct violation of international agreements, despite which the textbook is in active use at the military academy and think tank, the Martyr Lt.General Sayad Shirazi Center for Education and Research, for the training of officers.

 

Noor satellite

American intelligence and the Congressionally created EMP Commission estimate that Iran's  relationship with North Korea is steadily advancing its nuclear goal, that North Korea is now in possession of super-EMP nuclear weapons and has the cspability to deliver them. Both countries are actively collaborating and have been for years, signing an agreement to cooperate in "science and technology". Speculation that Iran has or may soon have the capability to deliver an EMP attack is shared by Israel.

 

Iran has succeeded in launching several civilian satellites between 2008 and 2015, including southern polar trajectories -- with the help of North Korean missile technology and technicians. Iran orbited a military satellite over the United States launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in April of 2020. The IRGC is in charge of Iran's nuclear operations. Its Noor-1 satellite weighs a mere 30 pounds but the Space Launch Vehicles's third stage went into orbit, clearly showing a capability to circle over the U.S. carrying a net payload of several hundred pounds; quite sufficient for a nuclear weapon.

"On April 22, 2020, Iran successfully launched its first military satellite Noor-1 (“light”) into low-earth orbit and simultaneously announced its parallel military space program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corps (IRGC). Noor was carried by a three-stage Qassed (“messenger”) space-launch vehicle (SLV) and the military satellite is believed to be orbiting the earth at an altitude of about 440 kilometers (km). The success of the launch earned Noor a “code designator” by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)."

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation