The Iran Threat is Real and Directed Toward the US

We are all worried about that time in the distant future when some Jihad nut job gets a hold of an A-Bomb and blows it up under a falafel stand on 48th street and sixth avenue. Today that danger is more real than ever. But the blast won't come from under a falafel stand but from the tip of an Iranian missile.

Launched from an innocent-looking freighter in international waters off the U.S. coast, the modified Shahab-3, even your off-the-shelf SCUD, need not have to hit anything. It would only need to get its warhead high enough over the continental U.S. One such blast would be enough to send America technologically back to the 19th century.

If you are not worried yet...read on and you will be:

Death To America?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

National Security: The jihadist threat once deemed laughable is a frightening possibility. As Iran tests its missiles, Iran's nuke may not be destined for Tel Aviv, but for the American heartland.

Among the missiles Iran said it tested this week was a new version of the Shahab-3, one with a range of 1,250 miles and armed with a one-ton conventional warhead.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the Inspector Clouseau of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently said Iran could have a nuclear warhead for the Shahab within six months.

In late May, the IAEA reported that Iran was working on a new missile warhead, known as Project 111, for the Shahab. According to documents in the IAEA's possession, Iran has redesigned the current "Shahab-3 missile re-entry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear warhead."

On Thursday, while these missile tests were under way, William Graham, President Reagan's top science adviser and the chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), established by unanimous consent of the House and Senate, updated Congress on the direct threat to the U.S. posed by these missile launches.

As he did in 2005, Graham warned the House Armed Services Committee that Iran was developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems targeted at Israel, plus a sophisticated variant that could deal a knockout blow to the U.S. and its high-tech military industrial complex. He reported the mullahs had conducted successful tests to see if the Shahab-3 could be detonated by remote control at high altitude before it striking any ground target.

Such a high-altitude nuclear blast would release an EMP capable of frying everything below from computer and communications infrastructure to power grids and everything that has a chip or a circuit board.

Launched from an innocent-looking freighter in international waters off the U.S. coast, the modified Shahab-3, even your off-the-shelf SCUD, need not have to hit anything. It would only need to get its warhead high enough over the continental U.S. One such blast would be enough to send America technologically back to the 19th century.

Apparently the Iranians are aware of it, judging from articles in the Iranian press. For example, an analysis in the Iranian journal Siasat-e Defai (Farsi for defense policy) in March 2001 weighed the use of nuclear weapons against cities in the traditional manner, as "against Japan in World War II," vs. its use in "information warfare" that includes "electromagnetic pulse . . . for the destruction of integrated circuits."

Another article published in Nashriyeh-e Siasi Nezami (December 1998-January 1999) warned that "if the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate with a few years."

Peter Vincent Pry, a senior staffer with the EMP Commission, also has testified before a Senate subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security that Iran has successfully test-fired missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea and that Iranian tests of the Shahab-3 missile have involved several high-altitude explosions.

As Pry noted: "The Western press has described these test flights as failures, because the missiles did not complete their ballistic trajectories. Iran has officially described all of the same tests as successful. The flight tests would be successful, if Iran were practicing an EMP attack."

In their reactions to this week's Iranian missile tests, we saw once again the stark differences between the two presidential candidates. Barack Obama said it was the result of our failure to talk with Iran. John McCain said it showed the need for missile defense.

The doomsday clock is ticking. We think McCain's right. Carrying a big stick trumps talking softly.