A report in the Sunday Times this weekend quoted U.S. defense experts as saying that Israel was likely to hit Iran with an electromagnetic pulse – EMP – which would effectively disable all of its computers and electronic equipment. The experts said that Israel had the capability to send Iran “back into the stone age” using such a weapon.

An EMP blast releases a high level of radiation into the atmosphere, effectively “frying” almost all electronic equipment, unless it is well protected. If the Iranian nuclear facilities are buried deep underground, as is suspected, the pulse might not disable them completely, but it would disable all radar, weapons systems, launching systems, and other military equipment above ground, the report said.