September 9, 2020—Iran’s Long-Ignored Existential EMP Threat Now Explicit! So What?

“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 US] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans.” ~ Afkar News article in Farsi, “American Soil Is Now Within the Range of Iranian Bombs” [Emphasis added.]

Click here for this important September 5, 2020 Gatestone Institute article by Mzajid Rafizadeh. Dr. Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East.

Iran’s state-controlled Afkar News article boasted about the damage that the Iranian regime could inflict on the U.S. and our troops and allies abroad, most importantly from my perspective with an emphasis on an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could kill 90-percent of all Americans. This was an echo of the warning decades ago from the authoritative Congressional EMP Commission and reiterated numerous times by the Commissioners and other authors, including yours truly. For example, click here for over 145 links to High Frontier messages that reference this existential threat from Iran, now made explicitly clear by Iran itself.

Moreover, Rafizadeh’s article came on the heels of Alfred Kredo’s September 4, 2020 Washington Free Beacon article, “Iran Caught Stockpiling Enriched Uranium Needed for Bomb.” Click here for Kredo’s report that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just indicated Iran has nearly doubled its stockpiles of enriched uranium, indicating Iran’s continued progress toward building nuclear weapons — based on recent IAEA inspections of several contested nuclear sites that had previously been off-limits. Kredo also reports that the “watchdog” nuclear scientists at the Institute for Science and International Security have stated that Iran’s existing enriched uranium store is sufficient for a breakout time as short as 3.5 months to achieve a nuclear weapon.

This finding is not surprising — as many of the above referenced High Frontier messages have shown that prudent planners should long ago have assumed that Iran already had nuclear weapons that could be carried by satellite to be detonated above the United States to create an major EMP event that could shut down the nation’s electric power grid indefinitely — and we are so dependent on electricity that its loss would lead to the death of most Americans due to starvation, disease, and societal collapse.

Click here for a pertinent February 12, 2016 National Review article, “Underestimating the Nuclear Missile Threat from North Korea and Iran,” in which I joined Ambassador R. James Woolsey (Former CIA Director), Dr. William R. Graham (EMP Commission Chairman), Fritz Ermarth (former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council) and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry (EMP Commission Executive Director), to make this explicit point that U.S. authorities should then have assumed Iran posed this threat. And click here for a year earlier, February 1, 2015 Newsmax article that reflects this same viewpoint, “Experts: Iran Now a Nuclear-Ready State, Missiles Capable of Hitting US.”

Considering North Korea and Iran together makes sense since they are allies, and prudent planners would presume Iran knows most if not everything Iran knows and even could have purchased nuclear weapons from North Korea — notably, with funds foolishly provided by U.S. authorities while negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

High Frontier’s reports have long emphasized such warnings, especially from the Congressional EMP Commission, which first warned of the existential EMP threat in a closed session of Congress in 2004, and in numerous public reports. Click here for their unclassified 2004 Executive Report and note the last paragraph of its Abstract: “The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected. Correction is feasible and well within the Nation’s means and resources to accomplish.” [Emphasis added.]

To emphasize that the Commission’s view of the threat and how to defend against it was publicly reinforced long ago, click here for the July 10, 2008 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) by Dr. William R. Graham, Chairman for 17 years of the EMP Commission, which included a number of nationally known competent authorities on EMP and its important threat to all we hold dear.

Subsequently, several members of the HASC championed reinstating the EMP Commission to make public more of what we had learned from decades of effort to protect our most important military systems. Click here for links to the subsequent public EMP Commission reports, from a webpage, now maintained by private funds because the government ceased to maintain easy public access to most of those important products of the EMP Commission.

Among many other important findings, commissioners have publicly reported that this existential EMP threat to the United States is included in military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — repeat Iran, as illustrated by the articles referenced above.

So, what are the “powers that be” doing to address this existential threat?

First, it should be noted that Donald J. Trump announced his support for addressing this long ignored threat in the 2015-16 campaign, and has followed through by highlighting its importance in his December 18, 2017 National Security Strategy and by issuing several Executive Orders and signing into law National Defense Authorization Acts that have directed the Federal Bureaucracy to address this existential threat.

Regrettably, the Federal bureaucracy has so far failed dismally to respond effectively to this direction. Click here for my July 14, 2020 message “On Washington’s Stumbling, Fumbling, Bumbling Responses to the Existential EMP Threat.” My descriptively titled message was triggered by a 13-page report issued by the President’s Science Advisor and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) — that absurdly claimed we need more studies.

My July 14, 2020 message also discussed the lethargic (to be generous) response of the Secretary of Energy, who is supposed to be leading a “whole of government” response to the May 1, 2020 Executive Order 13920, which is supposed to be securing the electric bulk power grid against cyber-attack. Note that the most comprehensive cyber-attack is an EMP attack.

Click here for the EMP Commission Chairman’s April 20, 2017 letter to the Secretary of Energy making this point (among other important ones), apparently since ignored by the Department of Energy, if not the rest of the Washington establishment, supposedly now while alleging to respond to Executive Order 13920.

And now — even as we see more evidence of the Existential EMP threat from Iran, we have the latest example of yet another dismal, lethargic bureaucratic response to the President’s initiatives. Click here for the latest delinquent, very disappointing, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report, dated August 17, 2020 and titled “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Program Status Report.”

Click here for the Homeland Security Today article on this 4-page anemic report that alleges to respond to the March 26, 2019 Executive Order 13865 that called for a substantive report by March 26, 2020. It, in fact, is little more than a self-aggrandizing recipe for more studies, with consequent more delays in addressing the existential EMP threat.

Is President Trump aware of how poorly his administration is responding to his 2016 campaign pledge, his December 18, 2017 National Security Strategy, his March 26, 2019 Executive Order 13865, his April 17, 2020 Executive Order 18920, and no doubt others that were intended to fulfill his campaign promise to address the existential threat of an EMP attack that is included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran?

Long before President Trump’s watch, I commented on Washington’s dysfunctional federal efforts to protect our critical civil infrastructure against EMP. Click here for my February 25, 2013 message, in which I poked fun at these dysfunctional arrangements by recalling the famous Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” comedy routine of yesteryear — click here. And click here for my June 24, 2014 message, 16 months later, again attempting a bit of humor in the title, “What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?”

But there was, and is, very little humor in recounting the federal government’s dysfunctionality — that is still so pervasive. We must get beyond such “Stumbling, Fumbling, Bumbling Responses to the Existential EMP Threat” if ever the American people are to be protected from the existential EMP threat.

In my view, this critically important matter must be addressed “from the bottom-up,” e.g., as we have been pursuing in the Lake Wylie Pilot Study in South Carolina. We have demonstrated that methods long used to protect our most important military systems can also be employed to affordably protect the electric power grid throughout South Carolina and beyond. Click here for pertinent related previous High Frontier messages.

We don’t need more studies in Washington, certainly not like those recently illustrated in the above discussion. Informed local and state authorities only need to be funded. Personally, I believe this action should be assigned to the nation’s Adjutants General and the National Guard; and Washington should get out of the way!

Bottom Lines.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) — Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and primary advocate of the Amendment of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 that significantly improved EO 13865 above — should understand that the Federal Government, and especially the Department of Homeland Security, is not at all responsive to his February 17, 2019 assessment following an important hearing on the EMP threat:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. Because most people are either unaware of the danger, or view these as very low probability events, there has not been sufficient public pressure to take effective action to mitigate these threats. Instead, we establish commissions and study panels, conduct research, and develop plans to develop strategies. It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.” ~ Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)

The bureaucratic beast has not changed its spots; and I believe we can expect more deficient administration studies, unless and until the President again takes an interest in this important issue and demands better from the Executive Branch — and Congress.

“We the people” should insist that this existential threat be addressed from the “bottom-up” and demand Washington support.

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.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential man-made and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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