The Times of Israel reports – quoting a British newspaper, the Sunday Times:

Israel could destroy Iran’s electric network with a specially designed electromagnetic bomb in the event of a military conflict between the countries …

[It] would be detonated above the ground, creating an electromagnetic pulse that would “disrupt all the technological devices working on the ground,” an American expert was quoted as saying to the London paper.

The use of the new technology by Israel was brought up in discussions regarding a possible attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities …

Such a move would send Iran “back to the stone age,” the British paper said.

Such a bomb would not kill people, or destroy buildings. It would wreck communications systems.

This kind of bomb would operate based on the nonlethal technology of gamma rays… The outburst of energy would “fry” electric devicesand currents around the source of the explosion.

Will Israel use this powerful weapon?

In his speech to the United Nations last Thursday (September 27, 2012), Prime Minister Netanyahu said:

The relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb. The relevant question is at what stage can we no longer stop Iran from getting the bomb. The red line must be drawn on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program because these enrichment facilities are the only nuclear installations that we can definitely see and credibly target.

But he did not go on to say that if Iran crossed that red line, Israel would destroy those nuclear installation by whatever weapons it deems most effective. Having sounded strong and determined up to that point, the Israeli Prime Minister suddenly sounded weak.

I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down. This will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether.

Sanctions and diplomacy, tried for years now, have spectacularly failed.

As long as Barack Obama is president of the US, no red line will be drawn. He won’t even consider it.

Will Israel yet save the world from a nuclear-armed Iran? Will it even act to save itself? If it will, and if not now, when?