Iran wants Israelis to worry that Hezbollah has a rare and powerful EMP weapon

[Pelican Press 0]

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Iran wants Israelis to worry that Hezbollah has a rare and powerful EMP *******

Iranian operatives recently claimed they given Hezbollah militants an EMP *******.

A powerful EMP, as Iran claims, could damage *******’s communications and power grid.

“It is reasonable to assume that Iran has looked at these types of weapons,” a retired general said.

Amid the ****-for-tat

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and threat-trading across the *******-Lebanon border, one recently leveled menace stands out — that Hezbollah has a ******* capable of knocking out *******’s electrical grid.

Reports have circulated among ***** media that Iran has given the Lebanese militant group it arms and trains a category of weapons that could damage much more than military bases, a type of ******* known as an

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or EMP. It could be real, or a bluff to get nuclear-armed ******* to think twice.

Sources in the Quds Force — a part of Iran’s

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— allegedly told Kuwaiti newspaper

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that “the Lebanese party now possesses ****** and missiles carrying explosive ‘electromagnetic’ warheads.”

The source said that “the ****** delivered to the party [Hezbollah] could be launched from fixed launchers, and some of them could be carried by drones to reach any point deep inside *******.” These weapons “could ******** all communications systems, including the electrical infrastructure, and thus halt all electronic systems that ******* relies on to coordinate its radars, aircraft, and forces in general.”

Nor would *******’s allies be immune should ******* ******* Lebanon. The Americans, British and “and everyone who might try to cover up *******’s inability” would be targeted. The story was quickly picked up by

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.

Assessing the credibility of the Iranian EMP threat is difficult. If oil is Iran’s top export, then its number two export is bluster to the world about supposedly cutting-edge military capabilities, including a

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unveiled in both 2013 and 2017 that was likely neither stealthy nor flyable. One reason for the posturing is to conceal the fact that Iran’s conventional military equipment, such as jets, tanks and anti-aircraft missiles, are decrepit Cold War-era systems that would be hopelessly overmatched by US, ******** and ********* weapons.

However, Iran has spent years investing in the development of

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(whether research has stopped as Iran claims, or continues as ******* and some Americans claim, is a matter of contentious debate). It has demonstrated genuine capabilities in developing a variety of ballistic missiles and drones, with Tehran exporting its

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to Russia. All of which suggests that Iran has the means to hit ******* and Europe, but it doesn’t tell us whether the EMP warheads themselves exist.

Or, what kind of EMP weapons they would be. When

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are mentioned in the news, or in apocalyptic movies and novels, they tend to be of the nuclear kind, generated either as a byproduct of nuclear weapons aimed at targets such as cities, or deliberately detonating nuclear weapons in space to generate EMP effects. Either way, the result would be the total disruption of the modern lifestyle as the spreading pulse fries circuits in the electrical grid, damages communications and other satellites, and disrupts global cell phone and GPS service.

However, there are also non-nuclear EMP weapons (NNEMP), devices that can be carried in a suitcase or a missile’s warhead, and that use explosives or high-power microwave emitters to generate a destructive pulse is similar that of a nuclear *******, “except less energetic and of much shorter radius,” explained the US government’s EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security in a 2021

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“NNEMP weapons can be built relatively inexpensively using commercially available parts and design information available on the internet. EMP simulators that can be carried and operated by one man, and used as an NNEMP *******, are available commercially.” Nuclear EMP pulses can travel hundreds of miles depending on their altitude of detonation, while NNEMP devices only have ranges of about 5 miles.

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In this 2016 photo, Hezbollah fighters parade with a mock rocket on top of a car.AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari

Iran does have a nuclear program, and probably could build a nuclear EMP ******* if it wanted to. The 2015

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Iran’s nuclear weapons program in return for lifted sanctions. But the Trump administration

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amid fears that the ****** Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement ******* to address other issues, such as Iranian ballistic missiles and support for terrorism, and that Iran could have still covertly develop nuclear weapons. Since then, Iran has periodically

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its uranium stockpile, a necessary step in building nuclear weapons.

However, an Iranian nuclear device — whether intended solely for EMP effects or not — could trigger a host of consequences, especially by inducing ******* to make good on its threat to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities (and with ********* forces joining in, Jerusalem hopes). But a non-nuclear EMP ******* might enable Iran to sidestep any red lines.

“I think it is reasonable to assume that Iran has looked at these types of weapons, either through their own proliferation efforts or through their growing linkages and relationships with Russia, China and North Korea,” retired Gen. Joseph Votel, former head of US Central Command, told Business Insider.

“I do believe they would look at EMP as a ******* that could be employed in ‘gray zone’ activities below the level of open conflict,” said Votel, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “Especially if it could be employed with more targeted results, like knocking out electronics in a specific geographic area.”

But this raises another question: would Iran give

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, its most important proxy? “Of all members of the so-called Axis of Resistance, Hezbollah would be a likely candidate to receive these types of weapons,” Votel said. “But I have not seen any evidence that this is the case. Like most special capabilities, there is a level of training and sophistication that must accompany its deployment.”

Given the small size of ******* — about the size of New Jersey — it wouldn’t take that many EMP devices to cause serious harm. At the least, a few non-nuclear EMP ****** over Northern ******* would hamper ******** military and civil communications and facilitate a surprise Hezbollah *******. A large-scale *******, by contrast, could trigger enough outages to dent *******’s half-trillion-dollar annual economy.

But this would also run the risk that ******* would treat it as an ******* by weapons of mass destruction, similar to a nuclear or chemical weapons strike. ******* is believed to have almost 100 nuclear weapons, and Hezbollah EMP weapons could be viewed as a WMD strike by Iran, which already launched hundreds of missiles and drones at ******* in an April 2024 *******. It’s also possible that ******* would reply in kind with its own EMP strikes that ********* southern Lebanon or even Beirut.

The common denominator of Iranian security policy is to use proxies like Hezbollah to expand Iran’s influence and undermine its enemies, but without triggering an ******* on the Iranian homeland. Giving EMP weapons to Hezbollah would risk the possibility that ******* and other nations would hold Iran responsible.

Michael ***** is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on

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#Iran #Israelis #worry #Hezbollah #rare #powerful #EMP #*******

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