OPINION:
In 2008, Congress heard testimony that Iranian military writings describe using an electromagnetic pulse strike — a nuclear burst high above the Earth that destroys the electrical systems below it — to defeat the United States.
Before the fighting this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency and U.S. intelligence assessed that Tehran held enough enriched uranium across multiple facilities, including Natanz and Fordow, for more than 10 such weapons. Its Shahab-3 missiles can climb high enough for an attack, and in 2024, Iran put a satellite into orbit.
The Secure the Grid Coalition warns that a missile from a cargo ship or a weapon already overhead would suffice.
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One burst over the middle of the country would devastate most of the lower 48 states. It would burn out control electronics in water systems, hospitals and fuel networks and send surges into the giant transformers that carry the nation’s power. Manufacturers build each to order, mostly abroad, over the years, and America keeps hardly any spares.
Grocery shelves would empty within days. More than 10 million Americans who depend on insulin, dialysis and refrigerated drugs could die, likely within weeks.
A blackout of a year or longer is realistic. A congressional commission estimated that a nationwide blackout lasting that long — a “black sky event” — could kill as many as 9 in 10 Americans, more than 300 million, through starvation, disease and the collapse of public order.
As Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has described, beginning in 2009, Pentagon specialists spent 15 years developing the weapon and plan to destroy Iran’s buried enrichment site at Fordow, which the U.S. struck in June 2025. Russia has spent more than four years failing to win control of the air over Ukraine.
Israel’s air force flew roughly 1,000 miles, refueling in midair, took the skies over Tehran in a day and a half, and crippled Iranian air defenses. When America’s B-2 bombers reached Fordow nine days later, not a single fighter rose to meet them.
America’s strike happened because Israel made it possible.
The war has cost 21 American lives so far, but Iran has been at war with America since the mullahs took power in 1979 and has killed nearly 900 Americans: 241 in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, 19 airmen at Khobar Towers, at least 603 troops in Iraq, three soldiers in Jordan in 2024 and at least six hostage and hijacking victims.
For four decades, U.S. presidents of both parties answered with sanctions and talks. Other than President Reagan, who ordered naval strikes in 1987 and 1988, no one struck Iranian military forces directly. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden even rewarded Iran with billions of dollars in cash and sanctions relief.
The regime killed all those Americans, most in uniform, and paid hardly anything. Every unanswered attack taught Tehran that it could push further, until it stood at the edge of a nuclear bomb. President Trump finally made Iran pay when he killed Qassem Soleimani in 2020, struck its nuclear program last year and launched Operation Epic Fury this year.
Critics say that Mr. Trump broke his promise to keep America out of foreign wars, but a war that keeps an Iranian bomb away from the power lines behind every American home is a defense of our homeland, even if the action is thousands of miles away. Israel did most of the fighting that made it possible.
A short-term premium at the pump is trivial compared with a year or more without electricity and the collapse of society. Americans owe thanks to both the president who made the call and the ally that cleared the way. Republicans should make that case plainly.
Still, the danger has not passed. Iran’s regime outlived its supreme leader, and his son now runs it. A congressional commission reported on our grid’s vulnerability in 2004, yet Washington has left most of it unprotected while agencies and utilities argue over who pays.
Successive administrations and congresses of both parties have left Americans exposed for decades. That bipartisan failure is a scandal.
Until America hardens the grid, keeping “Death to America” jihadis in Tehran from the bomb is the only protection we have.
Mr. Trump came to Washington as the outsider who would fix what the establishment had left broken. Our unprotected grid is exactly that kind of problem. His next promise should be to make America resilient again.
Most Americans doubt that this war is worth it because no one has told them what it averts. The president should tell them himself. Americans deserve to know. Meanwhile, thank you, Mr. President.
• Jeff Ballabon is principal of B2 Strategic Public Affairs.
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