November 27, 2018—North Korea’s Rattling Cages Again … and Iran?

Recent articles report that North Korea is planning not to give up all its nuclear arsenal; and that the communist government has revealed plans to use the weapons to launch EMP attacks to dismantle technology and computers in the blast area. And then there’s new evidence that Iran has been building nuclear weapons. Surprise…

Click here for Paul Bedard’s November 24, 2018 Washington Examiner article that headlined “North Korea reveals nuclear EMP attack plans.” And click here for the Daily NK article from which Bedard derived his story, allegedly based on documents suggesting that South Korea would be the target for such an attack. (They could also make an EMP attack on us, of course — say from a vessel off our undefended coasts.)

Bedard correctly noted that such an attack would “lead to the destruction of electronic circuits and semiconductors, affecting the use of TVs, mobile phones and computers in the area.” Such a widespread failure of South Korea’s mass communications system could lead to widespread chaos, and some experts are “calling on the government to take measures to prepare for such attacks.”

Mun Dong Hui’s November 23, 2018 Daily NK article also emphasizes that these claims result from North Korean officials charged with spreading propaganda to inform residents about the significance of nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. Propaganda officials reportedly were tasked with promoting policies of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) while also aiming to increase economic production, and have distributed a document explaining how nuclear EMP attacks work in an apparent attempt to strengthen domestic solidarity toward the regime.

Internal documents on nuclear EMP attacks obtained by Daily NK in late July 2018. Image: Daily NK

Daily NK reported a recently obtained WPK document had a section on the power of a nuclear EMP attack, describing it in detail and the kind of damage that would result. It correctly stated that in a nuclear EMP attack, “if the weapon explodes 30 – 100 kilometers above the ground, electronic machines and devices are severely damaged or their electricity cables are destroyed beyond repair.”

Nuclear EMP attacks are acknowledged widely as an important way to execute an attack against enemy forces, including as a precursor to attacking by other means.

Reportedly, North Korea also conducted GPS jamming attacks against South Korea in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2016 — technically another form for potential non-nuclear precursory attack.

Those attacks reportedly interfered with communication lines used by military bases, airplanes, mobile phone relay stations, ships and individual mobile phones in Seoul and parts of Gyeonggi Province. Some 2,143 aircraft reported GPS-related interference during the four periods that North Korea mounted its jamming attacks.

EMP attacks could lead to much more consequential destruction of electronic circuits in semiconductors, affecting the use of TVs, mobile phones, computers etc. The widespread failure of South Korea’s mass communications system due to an EMP attack and its effect on national infrastructure and military command systems could lead to widespread chaos, experts reportedly have warned while calling on the government to take measures to prepare for such attacks.

Hui mentioned the possibility that North Korea’s propaganda apparatus added the information about EMP attacks just as a reference for the general populace. Some “experts” say that the authorities added the section to propaganda materials handed out to farmers as a way to emphasize that the regime will not give up its nuclear weapons. Whatever.

As noted in previous High Frontier messages, EMP Commissioners and others have reported for years that North Korea’s war plans include the use of EMP weapons against the United States.

In the summer of 2004 — over 14 years ago, senior Russian Generals informed EMP Commissioners that Russia had “accidentally” passed to North Korea how to build “Super EMP weapons,” perhaps tested years ago by North Korea in underground tests counted as failures by many U.S. observers.

As I have reported on numerous occasions during that past several years, Iran is a close ally of North Korea’s and also may have such low yield Super EMP weapons.

Click here for an important February 1, 2015 Newsmax article in whixch I joined four other well informed individuals to report our opinion that Iran then might already have been a nuclear ready state, with missiles capable of hitting the United States. (My coauthors were Dr. William R. Graham who served as President Reagan’s science adviser, administrator of NASA, and chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission; Fritz Ermarth, who chaired the National Intelligence Council; and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry who is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.)

That fact should be kept in mind when reviewing recent reports that Iran had plans to test five nuclear weapons.

Click here for the November 21, 2018 Washington Free Beacon article by Adam Kredo heralding that “Iran had Secret Plans to Build Five Nuclear Warheads.” More accurately, Kredo reports that

“A new bombshell report based on a secret trove of seized Iranian nuclear documents shows the Islamic Republic had concrete plans to manufacture and build at least five nuclear weapons and that it was much further along in this scheme than previously known by the international community. (Emphasis added.)

Iran’s contested nuclear weapons program was much further along than the international community thought, according to a report based on scores of secret Iranian plans seized by Israel and publicly disclosed for the first time earlier this year.”

This report should provide sobering second thoughts for those who have claimed that the Intelligence Community is inerrant in its pronouncements.

Not the least place for such a sobering reflection should be on the past EMP Commission’s warning that the intelligence community’s “2014 Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report on EMP is factually erroneous and analytically unsound” [emphasis added] and should be withdrawn because it impedes progress on EMP understanding and protection.

Kredo’s article makes explicitly clear that Iran’s contested nuclear weapons program was much further along than the international community thought, according to a report based on scores of secret Iranian plans seized by Israel and publicly disclosed for the first time earlier this year.

He provides impressive references that Tehran was well along to building several nuclear weapons by around 2003, including with complex infrastructure needed to produce such weapons.

On Capitol Hill, associated reports are seen as validating critics of the Obama administration who years ago alleged the former White House underestimated the extent of Iran’s nuclear weapons progress while pursuing the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Moreover, since the five nuclear weapons were reported to have an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, it raises in my mind the potential afore mentioned possibility that Iran might have been developing Super EMP weapons that could to be delivered by any of Iran’s many ballistic missiles, including from vessels off our coasts.

Iran no doubt has retained much of its nuclear infrastructure and could continue using it to clandestinely conduct weapons work in violation of the ill-conceived Iran nuclear deal, if they don’t actually already have the weapons.

Kredo reports that the latest disclosures are fueling a push in Congress for the Trump administration to re-impose greater economic sanctions on Iran, a portion of which went back into effect earlier this month.

Some in Congress have called on the Trump administration to go further in its actions, including by fully cutting off Iran’s oil exports and access to international financial markets.

Information about Iran’s nuclear activities was kept hidden from the public as the Obama administration pressed the international community to support the 2016 nuclear deal. Apparently, the IAEA international inspectors have not yet considered the recent reports, which reportedly has been in its possession for at least six months.

This nuclear infrastructure remains intact, further fueling concerns about what Iran has been hiding from nuclear inspectors, who must give Iran advance notice of any inspections and refrain from entering the country’s contested military sites under the terms of the Obama administration’s terrible Iran nuclear deal.

Bottom Lines.

What goes around comes around. Yes, North Korea has nuclear weapons — has had them for years. And they have demonstrated they can launch them on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or on satellites to deliver an EMP attack on the United States. Truly an existential threat.

Moreover, it should be no surprise that Iran also may have nuclear weapons and the needed delivery methods also to pose an existential EMP threat to all Americans.

Whatever may come from current reactions to recent events, we should rapidly provide needed protection against this existential EMP threat to all Americans posed by both North Korea and Iran.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

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