US attack on Iran’s nuclear program risks emboldening North Korea’s Kim

Strikes on Iran send message to Kim Jong-un that nuclear weapons are essential for his survival.

An image released by North Korea’s state-controlled news agency in February shows the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, watching the launch of a cruise missile. Photo: KCNA/AFP/Getty Images

The US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities unfolded half a world away from North Korea. But for dictator Kim Jong-un, the attacks were a clear lesson: Nuclear weapons are critical for his survival.

The American and Israeli attacks likely hammered home for Kim how intertwined his country’s nuclear weapons are with the fate of his regime.

As such, the strikes potentially hardened his determination to hold on to — and expand — his nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to any attack on North Korea, security experts say. Kim can point to other countries, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, whose nuclear ambitions invited military attacks aimed at stopping them from fully developing atomic weapons.

Now, the US attack on Iran could complicate any future denuclearisation talks with Washington — talks that the Kim regime has for years rebuffed. The US strikes have likely deepened Kim’s distrust of America, experts say.

In the wake of the attacks on Iran, “Kim Jong-un is glad that he has nuclear weapons,” said Go Myong-hyun of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a state-affiliated think tank in Seoul.

Kim Jong-un inspects nuclear weapons institute in an undated image. Photo: KCNA/AFP

In recent years, North Korea has ramped up its nuclear program. Kim, who has called nuclear weapons the nation’s “powerful treasured sword,” pushed in September 2022 to add a clause to the country’s nuclear doctrine allowing for pre-emptive strikes for the first time. The nation’s main nuclear-test site began restoration work that year, after he ordered it demolished as a goodwill gesture during President Trump’s first term.

North Korea is now estimated to possess up to 50 nuclear warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more, according to a new study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank. The stockpile’s size was estimated to be 30 to 40 warheads five years ago, Sipri said.

“Once a country acquires nuclear weapons, it never gives them up,” said Lee Yong-joon, a former South Korean nuclear envoy, who is now chairman of the Sejong Institute, a think tank in Seoul.

The US last weekend struck three key Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. Israel has hit a wider list of Iranian nuclear sites, as well as attacking the country’s nuclear scientists.

The Kim regime helped Tehran design and build Iran’s underground tunnels and nuclear facilities, according to Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian dissident who revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium-enrichment site in 2002. That is why the events may hit particularly close to home for the Kim regime, analysts say.

Kim Jong-un inspecting a training base of the Korean People's Army's special operations forces in the western region. Picture: KCNA/ AFP

Trump has said that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” by the strikes, although a leaked US preliminary intelligence report assessed the American strike had set Iran’s efforts back by several months. Others, including the United Nations’ atomic agency chief, say Iran suffered very significant damage.

“North Korea is harder to penetrate, but there will be concerns over the elimination of high officials like nuclear scientists,” said Tianran Xu, an analyst at the Open Nuclear Network, a research group based in Vienna.

Trump and Kim met three times in 2018 and 2019. Since his return to the presidency, Trump has said he wants to engage Kim again. Kim has acknowledged his close relationship with the president, though he has ruled out further talks unless the US dropped its “unchanging aggressive and hostile policy” toward North Korea.

With the Iran strikes, the Trump administration is able to show North Korea that a military strike is a legitimate — and available — option for the US, said Sydney A. Seiler, a former US envoy for nuclear talks with North Korea in 2014 and 2015, which also included China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

“Trump could establish credibility that Pyongyang would pay a price for not coming to the negotiating table,” said Seiler, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Similar to Iran during the recent hostilities with Israel, North Korea saw itself at a major strategic disadvantage with the US and allied forces during the 1950-53 Korean War. The country was left in ruins due to constant bombings.

Trump and Kim met three times in 2018 and 2019. Since his return to the presidency, Trump has said he wants to engage Kim again. Picture: AFP

That prompted North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, the current leader’s grandfather, to use the nation’s mountainous terrain, building extensive military infrastructure and complexes underground.

It then began pursuing nuclear weapons, starting in the 1950s with Soviet assistance. Within a few decades, North Korea was going it alone, relying on nuclear scientists trained by the Soviet Union. A Pakistani nuclear scientist later admitted to secretly providing nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Pyongyang, like Tehran now, asserted that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. However, the endeavour was threatening enough during the Clinton administration that the US planned a surgical strike against a North Korean nuclear site in 1994, the then-Defense Secretary William Perry later said in interviews. The US didn’t proceed with the attack.

North Korea didn’t admit to its nuclear weapons program until 2002. Around that time, then-President George W. Bush had referred to North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, as the “Axis of Evil.”

Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, in 2003, becoming the first country to do so. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test about three years later. In recent days, Iranian lawmakers have taken a first step toward halting co-operation with the UN atomic agency and threatened to leave the NPT.

Wall Street Journal