"There is reason to believe the Iranian regime is working toward a capability that could destroy America as we know it" Swiss America.Com

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "...detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude. Why would they do that?”

Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a non partisan, blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

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The commission previously examined the Iranian tests and apparently connected the dots, even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so.  Newt Gingrich had also previously raised the possibility of an Iranian EMP attack

“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it.  And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.” 

The commission warned in a report issued in April that the United States was "at risk" of a sneak EMP attack by a rogue nation or a terrorist group designed to take out the United States' critical infrastructure.

"If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure,"

According To Swiss America "There is reason to believe the Iranian regime is working toward a capability that could destroy America as we know it".

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HARTFORD SENTINEL "Iran Threats and Going Amish"

STARS & STRIPES "Experts Say EMP Blast Could Cripple Country"

WORLD NET DAILY "US Risks Catastrophe In EMP Attack"

GATHER.COM "US Intel: Iran Plans Strike on US"

MIDWEST BUSINESS "EMP Bombs Pose Growing Threat"

INFOMATION WEEK "Its Time To Defend US Against Ultimate Denial Of Service Attack"

WORLD NET DAILY "Iran Believed To Test Missiles For Attack On US"

STRATEGY PAGE "The Dooms Day Device Is Ignored"

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "Hits and Missiles"

ALBANY DEMOCRATIC HEARLD "Dependent On More Than Oil"

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "Iran's Missile Threat"

TALK RADIO NEWS SERVICE "Electromagnetic Pulse Comes Out Of Sci-Fi Into Reality"

GLOBAL RESEARCH CANADA "Invisible Wars of the Future"

TALK RADIO NEWS SERVICE "Pentagon Brief - Iran Has Long Range Missiles"

ISTOCK ANALYST "Iran and the Oil Price Surge"

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While it might not cause significant immediate civilian casualties, the near-term impact on our U.S. society could be several times the damage caused from a direct nuclear strike on a major U.S. city.

Our first indication of an EMP attack would be that our electrical power grid would black out, and some, but not all, of the telecommunications would go out. We would not physically feel anything in our bodies. Older Ham Radio Sets using antiquated vacuum tubes might continue to function as long as they had adequate power sources.

As electrical power, water, sewer, and gas delivery systems failed, there would be “truly massive traffic jams,” Graham noted And since most modern automobiles and almost all signaling devices and systems all depend on sophisticated electronics,  they would also be knocked out by the massive EMP shock wave.

So everyone would basically be walking then. You wouldn’t be driving an automobile at all after that point in time.  And it wouldn’t do any good to call the repair or maintenance people because they simply wouldn’t be able to get there, even if you could get through to them,  which is also very doubtful because telephone, cell phones, PDA's and most other modern communications equipment would have failed.  Television broadcasts either over the air or cable based would also be non existent.  No TV, No Internet, No E-mail!

"The food distribution system also would rapidly grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline. Even warehouses equipped with backup diesel generators would fail, because “we wouldn’t be able to pump the fuel into the trucks and get the trucks to the warehouses.” said Graham. New Yorkers would find themselves totally out of food in just 3 short days.  New Jersey would feel the flood of New York residents who would begin to spread out from the city in search of food.

America “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have over  10 times as many people with more than ten times fewer resources,

"Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,”  The financial institutions would all be closed.  Money would rapidly become worthless.  The rule of law would quickly be replaced by anarchy.  Guns and gun carrying individuals and gangs would pillage everywhere.  Don't expect a police car to come to your rescue.  Automobiles won't run anymore remember?

Within a week or two of the attack, lots of people would start dying. Clean water supplies would cease to exist.

“People in hospitals would be dying at a much faster rate, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”

Exactly how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch an EMP attack which, from all indications, it appears to be preparing? Graham's reply is much more than truly frightening.

"You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,”

"The modern electronic economy would shut down, and America would most likely revert to “an earlier economy based on barter,” the EMP commission’s report on Critical National Infrastructure concluded earlier this year.

In his recent congressional testimony, Graham revealed that Iranian military journals, translated by the CIA at the commission’s request, “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States.”

"Furthermore, if Iran launched its attack from a cargo ship plying the commercial sea lanes off the East coast — a scenario that appears to have been tested during the Caspian Sea tests — U.S. investigators might never determine who was behind the attack. Because of the limits of nuclear forensic technology, it could take months. And to disguise their traces, the Iranians could simply decide to sink the ship that had been used to launch it".

In May 2007, then Undersecretary of State John Rood reported to Congress that the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States by 2015.

But Iran could simply place a Scud missile, hidden in the cargo hold of a cargo ship  then launch it from the commercial sea lanes near the US’s coasts as early as right now!

The only thing Iran needs for an effective EMP attack is a nuclear warhead.  Currently no one can say with any degree of certainty when that will occur. The latest U.S. intelligence estimate states that Iran could acquire the fissile material for a nuclear weapon as early as 2009.

Iran’s first test of a ship-launched Scud missile occurred in the spring of 1998. The test was mentioned several months later in indirect terms by the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, another blue-ribbon panel.

Few of our experts really believe that Iran could be deterred from launching such an EMP attack by the threat of massive retaliation against Iran. They point out that in a December 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who discussed the possibility of an Israeli retaliation strike after an Iranian nuclear strike, “The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while against the Islamic only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable,” Rafsanjani said.

Rep. Trent Franks, (R), Ariz., had planned to introduce legislation requiring the Pentagon to lay the groundwork for an eventual military strike against Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and EMP capability.

“An EMP attack on America would send us back to the horse and buggy era ... without the horse and buggy,” he told the Claremont Institute conference. “If you’re a terrorist, this is your ultimate goal, your ultimate asymmetric weapon.”

Speaking of Iran’s recent sea-launched and mid-flight warhead detonation tests, Rep. Franks recently noted, “They could do it ... either directly or anonymously by putting some freighter out there on the ocean.”

"The only deterrent against such an Iranian attack is the prospect of failure", Dr. Graham and other experts agreed. And the only way the United States could credibly threaten an Iranian missile strike would be to deploy effective national missile defenses.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a long-standing supporter of missile defense systems, told the Claremont conference that Sen. Obama has openly opposed missile defense tooth and nail and as president would cut funding for these programs dramatically.

“Senator Obama has been quoted as saying, ‘I don’t agree with a missile defense system,’ and that we can cut $10 billion of the research out — never mind, as I say, that the entire budget is $9.6 billion, or $9.3 billion,” Kyl noted.

Like Franks, Senator Kyl maintains that the only effective way to deter Iran from launching an EMP attack on the United States would be to deploy a capable and working missile defense system, including space-based interceptors.

The U.S. “needs a missile defense that is so strong, in all the different phases we need to defend against . . . that countries will decide it’s not worth coming up against us,” Kyl interjected.

“That’s one of the things that defeated the Soviet Union. That’s one of the ways we can deal with these rogue states . . . and also the way that we can keep countries that are not enemies today, but are potential enemies, from developing capabilities to challenge us. “

NO MATTER IF YOU ARE LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, AMERICAN, MEXICAN, OR CANADIAN,  THE PROSPECT OF AN  EMP  ATTACK ANYWHERE ON THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT SHOULD FRIGHTEN YOU!  THE DEVASTATION, STARVATION,  AND ANARCHY THAT FOLLOWS WILL BE OVERWHELMING!  HOW WILL YOU SURVIVE SUCH AN ATTACK?