Since the U.S. military denies any involvement in the launch, and if that’s to be believed, we haven’t heard word from the White House that it was a defensive launch, we have to conclude that it was fired by someone other than the U.S. military.
Who’s left? A civilian or non-civilian (read: terrorist), or a foreign government.
Since launching an ICBM from a submarine (we don’t know of any boats in the area) would require an actual submarine, we have to assume that a terror organization somehow got a hold of a pretty high-end submarine with ICBM’s on board. But no governments are reporting having lost a submarine, so that’s likely not the case.
You can, however, launch a missile from a mobile, submerged platform. Doing so requires the missile and platform loaded on a fairly large boat (or towed behind a fairly powerful boat), pulled into place, and dropped off, floating below the surface until the launch order was given. Some conspiracy theorists believe this is how the “airplane” that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 was launched… if you want to believe that it was a missile, not a plane… but I digress.
No terror organizations have come forward claiming responsibility for the launch. Since they would be all over freaking us out by having accomplished either the hijacking of a foreign sub, or with the successful deployment of a remotely launched ICBM, and have not, we can likely rule out this scenario.
