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

Iran does have a nuclear program, and probably could build a nuclear EMP weapon if it wanted to. The 2015 nuclear deal Iran’s nuclear weapons program in return for lifted sanctions. But the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement amid fears that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement failed 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 enriched 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 Israel to make good on its threat to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities (and with American forces joining in, Jerusalem hopes). But a non-nuclear EMP weapon 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 weapon 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 EMP weapons to Hezbollah, 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 Israel — 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 bombs over Northern Israel would hamper Israeli military and civil communications and facilitate a surprise Hezbollah attack. A large-scale attack, by contrast, could trigger enough outages to dent Israel’s half-trillion-dollar annual economy.

But this would also run the risk that Israel would treat it as an attack by weapons of mass destruction, similar to a nuclear or chemical weapons strike. Israel 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 Israel in an April 2024 attack. It’s also possible that Israel would reply in kind with its own EMP strikes that blackout 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 attack on the Iranian homeland. Giving EMP weapons to Hezbollah would risk the possibility that Israel and other nations would hold Iran responsible.

Michael Peck 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 Twitter and LinkedIn.