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It is very possible that a nation has been stuck to television by observing everything that happened in Iran. About 20 years ago, North Korea began Send engineers Specialized in the excavation of deep tunnels to Tehran. Two decades later, what was learned was tested through the greater furtive attack of the United States against Iranian underground nuclear facilities.
A nuclear lesson. They had several analysts In the CNN than the recent ones United States bombings by deployment of b-2 bombersThey have caused an immediate shock not only in the Middle East, but also in Eastern Asia. For experts, this act of force launches a clear (and dangerous) message to North Korea: without nuclear weapons, You are vulnerable. For Kim Jong Un, which has been reinforcing for years Your atomic program As the Central Survival Pilar of the regime, the US attack confirms a long sustained narrative: nuclear deterrence is the only reliable shield against a regime change from the outside.
Thus, far from determining proliferation, military action against Iran could accelerate Pyongyang’s arms expansion, in addition to strengthening its Strategic Alliance With Russia, which has become A military lifeguardtechnological and vital economy For the North Korean regime since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
The Moscow-Pyongyang axis. We have gone counting. Since 2024, North Korea and Russia have Institutionalized your cooperation in a strategic agreement of broad scope. According to A report of the multilateral sanctions monitoring team, Pyongyang has sent More than 14,000 soldiers and millions of ammunition, including missiles and rockets, to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In return, has received Air defense systems, anti -aircraft missiles, electronic warfters, critical military technology and refined fuel. Plus: the ability to Build Shaheds.
This exchange not only finances the North Korean military program, but allows you to access to advanced technologiesdirect experience in modern war and an alternative source of resources to Western sanctions. In the eyes of the North Korean regime, the pact is not only pragmatic but necessary in the face of international isolation, and the attack on Iran makes it even more indispensable.
Examples feeding the paranoia. From that perspective, the strategic message could not be clearer to Kim: countries that do not have nuclear weapons are exposed to American intervention. Iraq was invaded without having weapons of mass destruction. Libya left his nuclear program in exchange for diplomatic normalization, just to see Gaddafi overthrown years later.
Iran signed the nuclear agreement and maintained its enrichment below the arms threshold, According to the OIEAbut it was still attacked.
Two certainties. In contrast, North Korea has already done Six nuclear testshe owns between 40 and 50 active heads and has developed ballistic missiles Intercontinental capable of reaching the United States. Its arsenal, which includes multiple launch vectors, makes Pyongyang an actor with real deterrence and radically differentiates it from Iran.
For Victor Cha, from CSIS, American bombings to Iran reinforce in Kim two certainties: The United States does not have a viable military option against the North Korean nuclear program, and its decision to maintain and expand its nuclear arsenal was correct.
First nuclear submarine of North Korea
Tripartite deterrence. In addition, there is a difference against Iran: North Korea has a Triple Defense System that complicates any American military option. First, its own nuclear arsenal, second, the defensive alliance with Russia, which allows Moscow to intervene automatically in case of attack, and third, the legal and political need of Prior consultation With South Korea, required by the bilateral treaty with Washington, which converts any action into a regional and diplomatic high voltage issue.
In this regard, Professor Lim Eul-Chul warnedfrom the Kyungam University, which attacking North Korea could detonate a Total nuclear wargiven your ability to respond. “It’s not Iran,” LEIF-AMER EASLEY emphasizesby Ewha Womans University. Pyongyang can Attack directly To the United States and, in addition, Seoul is shot from most of its weapons systems.
Deterrence when rearma. The foreseeable consequence of the attack on Iran is a hardening of the North Korean position. The regime could Accelerate your tests Ballistics, advance in new eyes, experiment with long -range propulsion and expand your attack vectors. I would also do it under the mantle Russia protector and in open indifference to the resolutions of the UN Security Council, whose coercive effects have been reduced to a diplomatic formality.
In strategic terms, North Korea’s reaction will probably not be defensive but expansive: Technological cooperation with Moscow, joint military exercises, transfer of ballistic knowledge and new forms of economic and military interdependence.
The TNP. They remembered In The Conversation That the non -proliferation treaty, adopted in 1968, was a commitment between the five recognized nuclear powers (United States, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom and China) to not transfer nuclear weapons and commit, at least formally, to disarmament. In return, other countries promised not to develop atomic weapons.
The treaty, then reinforced with the additional protocol of the OIEA, endowed the nuclear inspection agency for broad powers for Verify peaceful use of atomic energy. It was the Oiea who first warned in 2003 about the suspicious enrichment of Uranium in Iran. And it was also this organization that, weeks before the recent bombings, denounced the Iranian breach for the first time in twenty years.
A fragile pact. However, effectiveness of the TNP It has been undermined for decades. The nuclear powers never fulfilled their disarmament commitments. In the case of North Korea, He withdrew from the treaty In 2003, he performed his first nuclear test in 2006 and today could possess up to 50 eyelets.
Israel, meanwhile, never formally joined, and maintains a unpacked arsenal. India, Pakistan and North Korea have stayed out or have been disconnected. In other words, the covenant has weakened by its own architecture that, although universal, is structurally vulnerable.
Iran and North Korea. To all this, the professor of economics underlined Anthony Burke that Iran now has Two roads. The first would be to reconstruct its uranium enrichment capacity and acquire highly devastating nuclear implosion designs, potentially through Russia or North Korea.
The second, more immediate, would be to directly receive Russian nuclear armament. The possibility is not remote, given the Progressive abandonment of arms control treaties by Moscow in The last decade and his growing alliance with Tehran.
Deterrence or the opposite. The declared intention of American action was stop development Iranian nuclear. But its effects could be exactly opposites in Oriental Asia. Far from strengthening the credibility of non -proliferation, bombing converts nuclear weapons into a kind of life insurance visible to authoritarian regimes that distrust Washington.
Professor Lim concluded that the distrust of North Korea to the United States will not only deepen, but will serve as internal and external justification for a new stage of rearmament and military expansion. Thus, in a perverse geopolitical turn, the attack destined to contain a proliferation could be the catalyst of another even more dangerous.
Korea did not need more excuses, but the United States has just given him the definitive one.
Image | Driver PhotographyKorean Central News
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