North Korean Arms, Nuclear Technology Flowing to Iran and its Proxies Across the Middle East

Iran, confronting American aircraft carriers bristling with war planes, counts on one source of support that’s gone almost unnoted as the world waits anxiously to see if the region will explode in war. That’s North Korea, purveying the weapons, technology and even the nuclear secrets on which Iran has counted ever since the Islamic regime’s disastrous war with Iraq in the 1980s.Almost forgotten after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the entry of American troops in the first Gulf War, the Iran-Iraq war “resulted in over a million deaths,” write a veteran analyst of North Korea’s military leadership, Bruce Bechtol, and a colleague at Angelo State University, Anthony Celso, in “Rogue Allies: the Strategic Partnership Between Iran and North Korea.”It was then that Iran and North Korea, two different but equally cruel dictatorships, bonded in a relationship that provided Pyongyang with funds that it desperately needed during a famine of the 1990s that took two million North Korean lives. For Iran, the reward was not only missiles for its own defense but also weaponry for caching in vast tunnel networks, redoubts, and caves carved out for hiding proxies ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. “Rogue Allies” adds a fresh dimension of understanding of Iran’s success at not only building its elite forces after Soviet subsidies ended in 1990 but also at developing a nuclear program for terrorizing its enemies, notably Israel.Beyond the destruction of Israel, Iran “aspires to promote its brand of Shia revolutionary doctrine challenging Sunni Gulf States Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” says the book. “The funds that North Korea generates from its alliance with Iran serve to maintain the regime’s ability to support its large military and to provide rewards to the small number of members in the elite who keep the governmental infrastructure running.”Iran is also getting plenty of support from Russia, which supplies anti-aircraft missiles, and China, the source of missiles and patrol boats, but the authors reckon “North Korea is the single most significant contributor to Tehran’s ambitious weapons acquisition policy.”Thanks to North Korea, the waters off Iran are no safer for American and allied vessels than the seas off North Korea. “Iran’s midget submarine fleet, for example, is based on North Korean engineering Yono-class designs.”On shore, the North Korean influence is just as pervasive. “Hezbollah’s military entrenchment in Lebanon has been furthered by Iran’s financial underwriting of North Korean rockets, missiles, and underground tunnel facilities,” say the authors. From Syria to Bahrain, militias “employ North Korean rockets, missiles, and conventional arms.” Beyond weaponry, the North Koreans have built tunnel complexes abroad just as they’ve done in their own country.Israeli defense experts, we’re told, have described the tunnels built by Hamas as “the Gaza Metro” that formed a critical node in Hamas’s resistance strategy and “permitted its al-Qassam military wing to store, smuggle, and deploy weapons.” Divers picked up drops of arms from “fishing vessels” and deposited them via tunnels beneath the sea into the “Metro underground system.”The authors may not be disclosing top secrets, but they provide descriptions of North Korean complicity that have gone largely unpublicized in the reporting on a struggle in which Iran counts on North Korean weapons. “The scale of Iran-North Korea weapons proliferation and sanctions evasions requires a recalibration of the international community’s efforts to combat their malign impact,” the authors say. “Past attempts in the nuclear containment area have failed, and neither Iran nor North Korea has been effectively contained.” Nor have “diplomacy, economic sanctions, and military threats” diminished “Pyongyang and Tehran’s weapons-for-financial-compensation.”All that’s clear is that North Korea is playing a role on Iran’s behalf as seen in this comprehensive report on “rogue allies” at both ends of what George W. Bush, in his state-of-the-union address in 2002, called an “axis of evil.”

North Korean Arms, Nuclear Technology Flowing to Iran and its Proxies Across the Middle East

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