A nuclear Iran is an obvious threat to the existence of Israel, but also poses a significant national security risk for the United States. That’s because just one nuclear bomb detonated 300 miles above the Midwest could literally send us back to the 1800s.

In April, the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission released a report warning that because Americans are dependent on a “complex and dynamic network of interlocking and interdependent infrastructure,” we are particularly vulnerable to an EMP attack from a single nuclear missile. Such an attack could have “long-term catastrophic  consequences” beyond any national or wartime disasters we’ve ever experienced. Considering the Bush administration’s ineptitude in dealing with Iran for the past eight years, the incoming administration of Barack Obama has a critically important opportunity on this issue.

John Wohlstetter, author of “The Long War Ahead – and the Short War Upon Us,” agrees, and wonders whether the new administration will be up to the challenge, given that Obama’s response to Iran’s testing of its Shahab-3 missile (range: 1,250 miles) was to call for more diplomacy and tougher economic sanctions, neither of which have yet deterred Tehran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. The issue became even more urgent last week when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been inspecting Iran’s main nuclear plant at Natanz, reported that Tehran now has enough low-grade uranium to make a single atomic bomb if enriched to weapons-grade material. But in an EMP attack, one is all it takes.