An Iranian nuclear EMP attack would literally accomplish “death to America”

How Iran could use a single nuclear weapon to ensure the death of the vast majority of Americans:

Washington Times: A Shariah-approved nuclear attack: An EMP would accomplish ‘death to America’

By James Woolsey and Peter Pry – – Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Congress must stop President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The most important reason — Iran can threaten the existence of the United States by making an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack using a single nuclear weapon.

It may obtain one, relatively easily, by cheating in the use of the nuclear infrastructure permitted them under the agreement.

U.S. intelligence cannot meet the impossibly high standard of assuring that Iran cannot acquire a single nuclear weapon and, given the regime’s existing nuclear infrastructure, cannot with absolute certainty guarantee that Iran does not already have one.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertions on June 16 that the United States has perfect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program are not credible: “We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge … .”

No.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is right to correct Mr. Kerry: “He’s pretending we have perfect knowledge about something that was an incredibly tough intelligence target while I was director, and I see nothing that has made it any easier.”

Mr. Kerry’s disregard of the limits of U.S. intelligence is reason enough to reject the deal — since just one nuclear warhead can threaten the existence of the United States.

A single nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over the United States would generate an EMP that could black out the electric grid and other life-sustaining, critical infrastructures, such as communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water. The Congressional EMP Commission estimated a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill anywhere from two of every three Americans by a low estimate up to nine of 10 Americans by starvation and social disruption.

“Death to America” is more than merely an Iranian chant — Tehran’s military is planning to be able to make a nuclear EMP attack.

On July 21 at the annual meeting of the Electric Infrastructure Security Summit in Washington, Rep. Trent Franks quoted from an Iranian military textbook, recently translated by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence University. The textbook, ironically titled “Passive Defense” (2010), describes nuclear EMP effects in detail. It advocates in more than 20 passages an EMP attack to defeat decisively an adversary.

The official Iranian military textbook advocates a revolutionary new way of warfare that combines coordinated attacks by nuclear and non-nuclear EMP weapons, physical and cyber-attacks against electric grids to black out and collapse entire nations. Iranian military doctrine makes no distinction between nuclear EMP weapons, non-nuclear radio-frequency weapons and cyber-operations — it regards nuclear EMP attack as the ultimate cyber-weapon. EMP is most effective at blacking-out critical infrastructures, while it also does not directly damage the environment or harm human life, according to Iran’s “Passive Defense”:

“As a result of not having the other destructive effects that nuclear weapons possess, among them the loss of human life, weapons derived from electromagnetic pulses have attracted attention with regard to their use in future wars … . The superficiality of secondary damage sustained, as well as the avoidance of human casualties, serves as a motivation to transform this technology into an advanced and useful weapon in modern warfare.”

Because EMP destroys electronics directly, but people indirectly, it is regarded by some as Shariah-compliant use of a nuclear weapon. “Passive Defense” and other Iranian military writings are well aware that nuclear EMP attack is the most efficient way of killing people, through secondary effects, over the long run. The rationale appears to be that people starve to death, not because of EMP, but because they live in materialistic societies dependent upon modern technology.

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Along with stopping the Iran nuke deal, we also must start preparing ourselves by hardening our power grid and our electronic systems.

Unless we do so, the Sun can, and eventually will, bring about mass deaths due to electromagnetic pulse via coronal mass ejection.

Gizmodo: What Would Happen if a Massive Solar Storm Hit the Earth?

We all know that major storms can wreak havoc, flooding cities and decimating infrastructure. But there’s an even bigger worry than wind and rain: space weather. If a massive solar storm hit us, our technology would be wiped out. The entire planet could go dark.

“We’re much more reliant on technology these days that is vulnerable to space weather than we were in the past,” said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He told Gizmodo, “If we were hit by an extreme event today, it’d be very difficult to respond.”

“Solar storm” is a generic term used to describe a bunch of stuff the Sun hurls our way, including x-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma. A massive solar storm hasn’t hit the Earth since the mid-19th century, but space weather scientists are very worried about the possibility of another.

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