Israel to employ high-tech weapons in Iran strike

Israel to employ high-tech weapons in Iran strike

Current and former US intelligence officials estimate that any Israeli attack on nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and likely include electronic warfare against the Islamic Republic's electric grid, Internet, cell phone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

The officials, who based their assessment on a US intelligence report published last summer, told the Daily Beast news website that Israel has been assembling a multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam, blind, and deafen Tehran's defenses in the case of a pre-emptive aerial strike.

According to the officials, one of the weapons Israel has developed is capable of mimicking a maintenance cell phone signal that commands a cell network to “sleep,” effectively stopping transmissions. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran’s emergency frequencies for first responders, they told the Daily Beast.

The sources also said that in case of an attack on Iran, Israel would likely exploit a vulnerability that American officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not “air-gapped”—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack. more