Also, such weapons can be launched surreptitiously, masking the country of origin, for instance if launched from an ocean-going freighter. Terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, regularly launch rocket attacks on Israel, but because they are not “recognized state actors” launching rocket attacks on another sovereign state, we do not put them in the same category. All terrorist groups, therefore, get a free pass when attacking a state. Where is any international outcry?
On assumption #5: Detecting a nuclear weapons program is not easy: the U.S. intelligence community already failed to detect the Iraqi nuclear program in 1991; the construction of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2009; the North Korean nuclear enrichment program in 2000-1, and the Libyan nuclear centrifuge purchases in 2005. That is quite a record.
Major elements of Iran’s nuclear program were discovered by internal Iranian dissidents who shared the information with the West. Can one count on such help in the future?
And as to assumption #6: Terrorism is Iran’s tool of choice. Iran’s affiliated terror groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, attack, or threaten to attack, the U.S., U.S. “interests” and U.S. allies.
An Iranian nuclear device in the hands of such terror groups — chosen precisely because they cannot be readily identified as working for, or connected to, a state — can therefore be used in an attack with impunity, totally undermining the assumption that such weapons in the hands of Iran are “only for deterrence.”
A rocket launched from mid-ocean has no return address. Detonated 70 miles above the eastern seaboard of the United States, a nuclear device leaves no signature.
Such an EMP attack – – its origin always unknowable — would plunge millions of Americans into a pre-industrial stone-age, equivalent to the early 19th century, according to both former Director of Central Intelligence, Ambassador R. James Woolsey and EMP expert Peter Pry.
Unless we end the Iranian nuclear weapons program now, we will probably only know if a threat is “real” after it is too late.