Iran’s nukesExperts: Iran advancing nuclear program with help of North Korea
Iran is using its strategic ties to North Korea to advance its illicit nuclear weapons program, experts say. 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.
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.
The authors noted that a number of Iranian ballistic missiles are modified North Korean models. For example, Iran’s Shahab-3 missile is a variant of North Korea’s Nodong-1. The warhead on the Shahab-3 was redesigned to carry a nuclear warhead in the mid-2000s by Kamran Daneshjoo, a top Iranian scientist.
Iran carried out the calculations that were necessary to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to match the weight and dimensional specifications of the Shahab-3, then carried out benchmark tests at the secret Parchin military site, Ofek and Shoham wrote. “More significantly, Iranian experts were present at Punggye-ri, the NK nuclear test site, when such tests were carried out in the 2000s,” they added.
The North Korean-built Syrian plutonium reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007 provided Iran with another platform to advance its nuclear program, according to Ofek and Shoham. Iran financed the project, which “was probably intended as a backup for the heavy water plutonium production reactor of Iran’s military nuclear program.”
While Iran and North Korea have used different technologies to produce plutonium, both use gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, and in that technology Iran is apparently more advanced than North Korea.
