Excellent points, especially #4. Their terror network is far reaching and Persians aren’t stupid and nothing if not calculating. The EMP threat is closer to a true nightmare scenario than that tendered in the article. I just don’t know if they can manage to move a cargo ship close enough to pull it off. You wouldn’t think so.
Limited wars might make sense between superpowers and their proxies. A limited war with terrorists does not. Killing them half dead won’t work. Take them down all the way and insist what rises in their place cannot be an enemy. This should have been done after Iraq fell. If you can get a coup to do it great, if not use the power needed to do it right.
“don’t know if they can manage to move a cargo ship close enough to pull it off. You wouldn’t think so.”
Unless the ship was detected being modified for a missile launch, it wouldn’t be that hard to get it close enough to the US coast to launch. There are hundreds of ships transiting the Atlantic at anyone time.
The ship would be licensed under a phoney owner and then promptly sunk after launch.