Mick Hartley

From the Tower:

Iran is using its strategic ties to North Korea to advance its illicit nuclear weapons program, two experts for the Begin-Sadat Center wrote in a paper published Tuesday.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Dr. Refael Ofek and Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Dany Shoham wrote that if Iran “is unwilling to lose years to the freeze on its military nuclear program,” it is likely exploiting its military ties with North Korea to advance its progress to a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear and ballistic missile ties between the two nations are longstanding and ongoing, though unlike Iran, North Korea already has developed nuclear weapons. While Iran is temporarily constrained by the nuclear deal, it can contribute to the development of North Korea’s program by sharing its technology and through finance. “There is an irony in this, as it is thanks to its [Vienna Nuclear Deal]-spurred economic recovery that Iran is able to afford it,” Ofek and Shoham noted.

“This kind of strategic, military-technological collaboration is more than merely plausible. It is entirely possible, indeed likely, that such a collaboration is already underway,” they added. In return for the boost Iran given its nuclear program, North Korea is likely “ready and able to furnish a route by which Iran can clandestinely circumvent” the nuclear deal….

Ofek and Shoham observed:

The chronology, contents, and features of the overt interface between Iran and NK mark an ongoing evolutionary process in terms of weapons technologies at the highest strategic level. The two countries have followed fairly similar nuclear and ballistic courses, with considerable, largely intended, reciprocal technological complementarity. The numerous technological common denominators that underlie the NW and ballistic missile programs of Iran and NK cannot be regarded as coincidental. Rather, they likely indicate – in conjunction with geopolitical and economic drives –a much broader degree of undisclosed interaction between Tehran and Pyongyang.

The authors urged the Trump administration to “meticulously and rigidly ascertain” that the strategic cooperation between the two rogue states is stopped.

Trump is, at least, more inclined to do just that than Obama ever was. Claudia Rosett wrote about probable nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea back in December, and noted how the Obama administration was doing its best to ignore the whole subject. Mind you, Hillary Clinton would, I think, have been tougher than Obama on this.

Remember Bush's "axis of evil"? How the sophisticates laughed…

[Those watching the latest Homeland (season 6) will be aware that there are rumours floating around about Iran breaking the terms of its nuclear treaty with the old Obama administration by secretly dealing with North Korea – though it's unclear whether this is genuine intelligence or just black ops from CIA man Dar Adal, putting the frighteners on the nice President-elect Elizabeth Keane. It's a shame they (understandably) assumed there'd be a Democrat woman President after Obama. It would've been interesting to see what they'd have made of Trump.]