EMP – The Next Iranian Strategic Threat to U.S. Mainland?

by Dr. Walid Phares

As the transition teams are working to update the President-elect and his national security advisors on the many challenges awaiting the new Administration, the threat environment for the near and medium future is widening as new strategic menaces are anticipated. One of these threats should affect national security planning for years to come.

Over the past seven months, I have been interacting with U.S. Homeland Security and European defense officials and experts on the next potential threat to the West, more particularly against mainland America. The signature of that strategic menace is EMP, or electro magnetic pulse - a weapon of the future but already available in design, construction and possible deployment. As eyes are focused on the Iranian nuclear threat, and as we began recently to understand that missile advances are as important as fissile material development, private sector projects and some in the defense world are now paying attention to what can cause a wider circle of damage to the U.S. and thus be more crippling to U.S. national security.

In short, and I borrow from Project Shield America - http://shieldamerica.org/ - an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could be triggered by a nuclear warhead detonated at high altitude over America. The resulting, devastating blast would create an EMP, a shockwave that could "cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure." Even if a high-altitude EMP kills nobody at first, it would paralyze a large section, if not most of, of the United States. The lingering practical and economic effects would take anywhere from hours to years to resolve: when secondary effects are considered, such as the unavailability of food, an EMP could be even deadlier than a direct nuclear strike against the mainland. Indeed, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett has written: "Where the terrorist airliner attacks of 9/11 killed thousands, a terrorist EMP attack could indirectly kill millions and conceivably cause the permanent collapse of our entire society." Unable to access food or water, most Americans could starve to death.

By understanding how fundamental and irreversible the reliance of the United States is on electronics for every aspect of its citizens' lives (all of our food and water plants are run by electricity which would be destroyed), we realize how this makes the U.S. extremely vulnerable to this particular emerging threat. And this raises the issue of identifying the point of origin of such a menace. Many indicators direct us to Iran. In previous articles on the Counterterrorism Blog and other outlets, I have focused on the missile threat as a dossier by itself, independent from the nuclear file for a rational reason: missiles can be used to deliver nuclear weapons, but also other weapons, including chemical and biological ones. In the case of Hezbollah's mini war of July 2006 with Israel, large rockets and small missiles were conceived as classical but were strategically aimed at chemical sites as well. Hence the missile threat is diverse. In the case of an EMP weapon system, we need to look at Iran's missile capability from the perspective of delivering a blow - not just to Israel or U.S. and Western targets in the region - but also across large bodies of water too.

Geopolitical projections, including developments which may take place in Iraq and Afghanistan, tell us that Iran may find itself free from constraints to equip itself with long range missiles able to reach the U.S. mainland at some point in the near future, not only from mainland Iran, but also from other locations closer to America, including from the hands of terrorist forces in the open seas and elsewhere.

As a result of these geopolitical considerations, I believe it is urgent for the defense and counterterrorism communities to increase the level of study and effort in this emerging field of strategic threats and begin a public awareness campaign to educate citizens in this regard.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy. He is the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.