North Korea and Iran: A nuclear proliferation nightmare
As tension in the Middle East increases, with the likelihood that Iran will strike out at Israel for killing Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, a more widespread war in the region has become more likely. This would be a war with an Iran aligned with North Korea, a proliferator of missile and nuclear technologies.
Iran looked to North Korea for conventional weapons assistance during its war with Iraq in the 1980s. In the 1990s, North Korea provided Iran with ballistic missile assistance for Iran’s medium-range ballistic missiles, the Shahab 1, 2 and 3, based on North Korea’s Nodong missiles, with a range exceeding 700 miles.
Iran is a threshold nuclear weapons state. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is enriching uranium at the 60% purity level while denying IAEA monitors access to suspected nuclear weapons sites in Iran. In 2003, Iran reportedly ceased efforts to become a nuclear weapons state. It’s obvious, however, that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants to retail the option of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Indeed, if there is an imperative for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, knowing the IAEA and the international community are watching their nuclear weapons-related activities closely, having an ally in a nuclear North Korea is a good default option. Clearly, that means Iran could acquire nuclear weapons or the fissile material for a dirty bomb directly from North Korea for its use against Israel or any other adversary. Or Iran can pass the nuclear weapon or fissile material to one of its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis — for use against Israel or another enemy.
Under the cover of darkness, in the early hours of Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli F-15s entered Syrian airspace and bombed a nuclear reactor at Al Kibar, Syria. Silence followed for a few months, until the U.S. government and the IAEA confirmed that the Al Kibar site was a nuclear reactor, a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor like North Korea’s nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea.
In April 2007, Meir Dagan, director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, traveled to Washington and briefed national security adviser Steve Hadley and Vice President Dick Cheney about Israel’s detection of Al Kibar and North Korea’s assistance in the construction of this nuclear reactor, with photos of the official in charge of North Korea’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon standing next to the leader of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.
This was clearly a case of North Korea providing technical and material support to Syria for the construction of a nuclear reactor for one purpose: nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s assistance to Syria for this nuclear reactor, however, reportedly started years earlier, at a time when North Korea was engaged with the U.S. and others (China, South Korea, Japan and Russia) in Six-Party Talks negotiations. Indeed, in September 2005, a joint statement committed North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and nuclear programs in exchange for economic development assistance, security assurances, a discussion of civil nuclear energy assistance and a path to normalization of relations.
The irony, however, was that North Korea was prepared to put that progress in jeopardy to assist Syria with the construction of a nuclear reactor for nuclear weapons.
The current situation is starkly different. North Korea ceased negotiating with the U.S. and South Korea a few years ago. Indeed, North Korea has been in a race to build more sophisticated nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, while refusing to talk to the U.S. or South Korea, whom they view as the principal enemies. Moreover, North Korea is more closely aligned with Russia, China and Iran, with North Korea reportedly providing Russia with artillery shells and ballistic missiles for its war in Ukraine in return for nuclear, missile and conventional weapons support from Moscow.
This is a time for extreme counterproliferation diligence. To ensure that North Korea does not provide Iran or one of its proxies with a nuclear weapon or fissile material for a dirty bomb. The Proliferation Security Initiative, which has 113 member states, was established in 2003 to ensure that North Korea does not proliferate nuclear weapons or fissile material to Iran or any other rogue state or terrorist organization.
Ideally, the U.S. should be passing this message directly to the leadership in Pyongyang to ensure that North Korea understands that there would be severe consequences if it supplies nuclear weapons, fissile material or nuclear technology to Iran or any other state or terrorist organization.
Source » washingtontimes.com
