Regardless of intelligence uncertainties and unknowns about Iran's
nuclear weapons and missile programs, we know enough now to make a
prudent judgment that Iran should be regarded by national security
decision makers as a nuclear missile state capable of posing an
existential threat to the United States and its allies.
On Jan. 22,
The Jerusalem Post reported that Iran deployed
a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) "whose range far
exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and
Europe." It was also shown on Israeli television.
Iran's development of an ICBM at this time would be consistent with
unclassified U.S. intelligence community reports that in 2013 warned
Iran could test an ICBM by 2015.
Iran and others claim the missile is not a military ICBM for
delivering nuclear warheads but a peaceful Space Launch Vehicle
(SLV) for orbiting satellites.
This is a distinction without a difference.
Iran has a demonstrated capability to orbit satellites weighing over
a ton, which means it could also deliver a nuclear warhead against
the U.S. or any nation on Earth.
Indeed, Iran has orbited several satellites on south polar
trajectories passing over the western hemisphere from south to
north, as if practicing to elude U.S. Ballistic Missile Early
Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, which are oriented to
detect and intercept threats coming from the north.
Moreover, the altitude of these satellites, if they were carrying a
nuclear weapon detonated over the center of the U.S., was in all
three cases near optimum for generating an electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) field across all 48 contiguous United States. EMP could cause
a protracted blackout of the national electric grid and other
life-sustaining critical infrastructures.
Iranian military writings describe eliminating the United States
with an EMP attack. Rep. Trent Franks in congressional testimony
given in December 2014 noted that an official Iranian military
document, recently translated by the intelligence community,
endorses making a nuclear EMP attack against the United States. The
document describes the decisive effects of an EMP attack no fewer
than 20 times.
Iran has missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, but does
Iran have a nuclear warhead?
Seven years ago, in 2008, Mohammed ElBaradei, then director general
of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), warned that
Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within six months. The IAEA
nuclear watchdog has repeated this warning every year since.
On Jan. 20, 2014, former IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen
warned that Iran could build a nuclear weapon in 2-3 weeks. He also
acknowledged that this estimate is based only on Iran's known
capabilities — not on what Iran may be capable of doing, or may
already have done in secret facilities. Iran has underground
facilities suspected of being used for nuclear weapons development
to which the IAEA has repeatedly been denied access.
Nonetheless, IAEA has discovered Iran has experimented with
implosion technology, necessary for making more sophisticated
nuclear weapons. IAEA also discovered plans for a nuclear warhead
that could fit on Iran's missiles.
We know from our own experience that developing a re-entry vehicle
(RV) for a nuclear missile warhead is not all that difficult. The
U.S., working from scratch and using the technology of over 50 years
ago, in 1955, developed its first RV for the Thor, Jupiter, and
Atlas missiles in just a few years.
Nor is it necessary for Iran to test a nuclear weapon in order to
develop a missile warhead.
Israel, we know from the defection of Israeli nuclear scientist
Mordechai Vanunu and other sources, developed a sophisticated array
of nuclear weapons, including missile warheads, without testing.
South Africa, too, before dismantling its nuclear arsenal, deployed
nuclear weapons and designed a missile nuclear warhead without
testing.
However, Iran and North Korea are strategic allies. Iranian
scientists reportedly have participated in North Korea's nuclear
tests.
If Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, it will be the first
nation to go through the great trouble and expense of developing an
ICBM capability without first having nuclear warheads to make the
missile militarily useful. Historically, every other nuclear missile
state has always developed nuclear weapons first, before long-range
missiles.
The fact of Iran's ICBM capability and their proximity to nuclear
weapons necessitates that Iran be regarded as a nuclear missile
state — and as a menace to the entire world — right now.
Congress and the president should give high priority to passage of
the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act and the SHIELD Act, which
will protect the national electric grid and other critical
infrastructures from EMP attack.
Holes in the National Missile Defense need to be patched, and the
U.S. nuclear deterrent modernized.
Regime change ousting Iran's oppressive mullahs through popular
revolution should be encouraged. The CIA used to be good at this.
Dr. William R. Graham served as President Reagan's science
adviser, administrator of NASA, and chairman of the Congressional
EMP Commission. Ambassador Henry F. Cooper was director of the
Strategic Defense Initiative and chief U.S. negotiator to the
defense and space talks with the USSR. Fritz Ermarth was chairman of
the National Intelligence Council. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is
executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland
Security, a congressional advisory board, and served in the
Congressional EMP Commission, the Strategic Posture Commission, the
House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.