Iran is actively developing the capability of unleashing an EMP attack to destroy the United States.

Iran is actively developing the capability of unleashing an EMP attack to destroy the United States.  The JCPOA permits them to proceed with their technical and doctrinal developments and provides them with economic resources to continue these programs. Thus, the

JCPOA unleashes dangerous threats to the United States:

*    Exposes the East coast of the US {New York, Washington and Boston|to the direct threat  a nuclear attack and  the entire US to the direct threat of an  EMP attack."{ http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-woolsey-and-peter-vincent-pry-the-growing-threat-from-an-emp-attack-1407885281 ;

http://ltgjcmilopsg3.blogspot.com/2015/08/jcpoa-is-directthreat-to-united-states.html } 

A sample of the definitive background information which documents this assertion:

1.THE JCPOA COULD  ENABLE IRAN TO GET THE EMP WEAPONRY TO DESTROY AMERICA  James Woolsey and Peter Pry  explain  the EMP risk:

 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.

For example, an Iranian article on nuclear EMP attack, "Electronics To Determine Fate Of Future Wars" (1998), concludes hopefully (from the Iranian author's perspective):

"If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years ... . American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.

Written 17 years ago, Iranian military doctrine has assessed nuclear EMP attack against the United States for now nearly two decades.

The Iranians have done more than just think about EMP attack.

The Congressional EMP Commission found that Iran has practiced launching missiles and fusing warheads for high-altitude EMP attack, including off a freighter. Iran has apparently practiced surprise EMP attacks, orbiting satellites on south polar trajectories to evade U.S. radars and missile defenses, at altitudes consistent with generating an EMP field covering all 48 contiguous United States. Iran launched its fourth satellite on such a trajectory as recently as February 2015.

A single nuclear weapon would complete the list of requirements.

Finally, because a nuclear EMP attack can be conducted by surprise and anonymously - deterrence may not work against EMP.

Deterrence depends upon knowing who attacked and being able to retaliate. Unlike a nuclear weapon used to blast a city, high-altitude EMP leaves no collectible bomb debris for forensic analysis to identify the aggressor.

EMP attack by missile or balloon launched off a freighter could be from many possible actors. Even Yemen's Houthis have Scud missiles and know how to use them, having recently killed the chief of Saudi Arabia's air force with a Scud strike on King Khalid Air Force Base.

Hundreds of satellites are in low earth orbit, unseen when approaching the United States from the south, that could help disguise the origins of an EMP attack. And the EMP could damage the means necessary to identify the attacker and U.S. retaliatory capabilities.

One Iranian nuclear weapon is one too many for an Iran ruled by theocratic totalitarian genocidal imperialists.

No deal.

• R. James Woolsey is a former director of Central Intelligence and is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.

2.     From EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security letter to president Barack Obama posted on may 27, 2015 

President Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,
We need your personal intervention to provide for the protection of the American people against an existential threat posed by natural and manmade ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP). The consequent failure of critical infrastructure that sustain our lives is a major national security threat and would be catastrophic to our people and our nation.

The national Intelligence Council, which speaks for the entire U.S. Intelligence Community, published in its 2012 unclassified Global Trends 2030 report that an EMP is one of only eight Black Swan events that could change the course of global civilization by or before 2030. No official study denies the view that an EMP is a potentially catastrophic societal threat that needs to be addressed urgently. America is not prepared to be without water, electricity, telephones, computer NETWORKS, heating, air conditioning, transportation (cars, subways, buses, airplanes), and banking.

All the benefits of our just-in-time ecomony would come to a deadly halt, including the production of petroleum products, clothing, groceries and medicine. Think about cities without electricity to pump water to their residents.

Some signatures to this letter are from people who-like a growing number of Americans-have only recently learned about the EMP THREAT and find it hard to believe that our government has permitted it to continue. They joined in signing because they, in representing those same Americans, wish to show broad support for qualified experts ending this vulnerability as quickly as possible.

An EMP is like a super-energetic radio wave from natural or manmade causes that can damage and destroy electronic systems across vast regions, potentially across the entire continental United States, across Europe, or any other country that has not hardened its electric power grid. Russia and China have substantially hardened their electric grids. Other nations are beginning to harden theirs. But the United States has done little or nothing to counter this threat.

*****

As we have known for over a half-century from actual test data, even more damaging EMP effects would be produced by any nuclear weapon exploded a hundred miles or so above the United States, possibly disabling everything that depends on electronics for control or operations within a line of sight from the explosion. Electricity NETWORKS could be shut down indefinitely until major repairs could be made, and this could take months, even years. Cascading failures from even a lower altitude nuclear burst over the northeastern U.S. could indefinitely shut down the electric grid that produces three quarters of the U.S. electric power. Computers would be incapacitated. Supply chains would shut down. Imagine Hurricane Sandy affecting a much larger area without the immediate physical damage but also without any hope for relief supplies.

Russia and China have already developed nuclear EMP weapons and many believe others possess EMP weapons including North Korea and soon Iran-and likely their terrorist surrogates. For example, they could launch nuclear-armed short or medium range missiles from near our coasts, possibly hiding the actual sponsor from retaliation. North Korea and Iran have tested their missiles in ways that can execute EMP ATTACKS from ships or from satellites that approach the U.S. from the south where our ballistic missile warning systems are minimal.

*****. 

Sincerely yours,

Dr. George Baker – Former U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency EMP Program Director, Professor Emeritus on Critical Infrastructure PROTECTION, James Madison University

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) (Rtd.) – Father of the Congressional EMP Commission

Jen Bawden – Task Force on National and Homeland SECURITY and Member of the Steering Committee of the Secure the Grid Coalition

Senator Rudy Boschwitz  (R-MN) (Rtd.) – Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, President G.H.W. Bush’s Emissary to Ethiopia (1991)

Ambassador Henry F. Cooper – Former Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Chief U.S. Negotiator in the Geneva Defense and Space Talks, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Strategic and Space Systems

Thomas Donnelly – Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware Center for SECURITY Studies and AEI

Fritz Ermarth – Former Chairman National Intelligence Council, Director of National SECURITY PROGRAMS, Nixon Center

Frank Gaffney, Jr. – Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy

Jerry Goodwin – President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) New York Metropolitan Chapter

Dr. William R. Graham – Former Chair of the EMP Commission, Science Advisor to President Reagan, Director of White House Science and Technology Policy, and NASA Administrator

Professor Sam Hayes (Rtd.) – Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

David Hunt – Former CIA Senior Clandestine Officer and Former FBI Chief of Station, NYC

John Kappenman – Space Weather Consultant to Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and EMP Commission; Designer ACE Satellite and EMP Blocking Devices; President, Storm Analysis Consultants

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) (Rtd.) – Co-chair of AEI’s American Internationalism Project

Robert Laidley – President, The Atlantic and Conservation Institute

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) (Rtd.) – Co-chair of AEI’s American Internationalism Project

Herb London – President of the London Center for Policy Research, New York

Vice Admiral Robert Monroe (Rtd.) – Former Director U.S. DEfense Nuclear Agency

Major General Robert Newman (Rtd.) – Former Adjunct General of Virginia

Michael O’Hanlon – Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues

Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff – President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis Inc. and Shelby Cullom Devis Professor of International SECURITY Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Danielle Pletka – Senior Vice President for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry – Former Congressional EMP Commission, Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, House Armed Services Committee, CIA, Executive Director Task Force on National and Homeland SECURITY

Dr. Gary J. Schmitt – Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at AEI

Dr. George Schwab – President of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy

Admiral James Stavridis (Rtd.) – Dean of the Fletcher School, Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (2009-2013)

Ambassador Kurt Volker – Former United States Ambassador to NATO

The Hon. David M. Walker – Former U.S. Comptroller General

Rep. Curtis Weldon (R-PA) (Rtd.) – Former Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee; and Co-chair of the Duma-Congress Study Group, the official inter-parliamentary relationship between the United States and Russia; Sponsor of the 1998 EMP Commission Legislation

John Whitehead – Former Senior Partner and Co-Chairman Goldman Sachs, Chairman Emeritus Brookings Institution, Former Deputy Secretary of State, Former Chairman AEA Investors, Former Chairman The International Rescue Committee, Former Chairman The Asia Society, Director of the Nature Conservancy, and Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Died February 7th, 2015

Ambassador James Woolsey – Former Director of Central Intelligence

Copies to Administration Officials:

The Hon. Joseph Biden, Vice President of the United States

The Hon. John Kerry, Secretary of State

The Hon. Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense

The Hon. Ernest Moniz, Secretary of Energy

The Hon. Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security