‘Nothing More Than Souped-Up No Dongs’: The North Korean Roots of Iranian Missiles Raining Down on Israel

Add North Korea as another of Israel’s foes in its war to snuff out Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Most of the missiles the Iranians have been firing at Israel were either made in North Korea or fabricated with North Korean parts and technology. North Korean engineers and technicians are frequent visitors to Tehran.Just as North Korea has provided arms and men for Russia’s war in Ukraine, so the North has equipped Iran with both missiles and the means to produce them, according to a leading analyst on North Korea’s missiles and nukes, Bruce Bechtol, author of books and studies on the North’s armed forces.The relationship between Iran and North Korea explains why President George W. Bush, in his first State of the Union address in 2002, lumped North Korea with Iran in his “axis of evil” that also included Iraq, then ruled by Saddam Hussein.The Iran-North Korean relationship has grown in exchanges of technology as well as components for the weapons of mass destruction that leaders of both regimes deem essential for personal and national survival.“There were only a few types of ballistic missiles fired from Iran at Israel over the past few hours,” Mr. Bechtol, a former North Korea intelligence analyst at the Department of Defense and now a professor of security studies at Angelo State University, tells the Sun. “Two of the three, the Emad and the Ghadr,” he says, “are nothing more than souped-up No Dongs,” referring to a North Korean mid-range missile. As Mr. Bechtol explains, North Korea over the years has built up a tight relationship with Iran in which teams go back and forth observing, advising, and assisting.“The proliferation and development story goes like this,” Mr. Bechtol says. “The North Koreans proliferated the No Dongs, more than 200 of them, to Iran. Then Iran asked the North Koreans to build a No Dong ‘factory’ for them in Iran.”The North Koreans were glad to help. “The facility still needed many North Korean parts and North Korean specialists — engineers and technicians — in order to manufacture the missiles called the Shahab-3 in Iran.,” Mr. Bechtol says. “From there the North Koreans assisted the Iranians in improving the range and firepower of the missile. From this effort was born the Emad and the Ghadr.”But don’t credit — or blame — North Korea for developing the third type of missile that Iran has been firing at Israel. That one “appears to be solid fuel,” Mr. Bechtol says, “and did not come from North Korea.” The Iranians may have had some Chinese help, but they have been mainly responsible for producing the Sejiil, powered by solid fuel rather than the liquid fuel used in the other two types of missiles.The advantage of solid fuel is that it’s already inside the missile when it’s rolled onto the launch pad, ready to fire. That’s a vast improvement over pumping in liquid fuel after the missile is poised for firing — an exercise that gives enough time for spy satellites to see what’s going on. With a range of 1,500 miles, “the Sejjil could be a leading candidate to carry atomic warheads,” David Axe writes in the National Interest.Iran’s missiles, though, are not likely to prevail over Israeli air strikes on just about every target that might contribute to its nuclear program.“Israel is now the winner of the game,” a veteran Japanese diplomat, Nobukatsu Kanehara, a retired ambassador who previously served in Japan’s embassy in Seoul, says. “Iran will have to step back. Iran is now in trouble. Bombing Iran will get Iran to think twice.”North Korea’s support for Iran, however, adds a new dimension to the eternal effort at getting through to the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, who has cooperated with Iran in developing a nuclear warhead based on technology provided by a late Pakistani physicist, A.Q. Khan. If talks with North Korea ever resume, might Iran come up? That won’t be easy. “North Korea began ‘proliferating’ weapons, not nukes, to the Middle East in 1967,” Mr. Bechtol, co-author with a colleague at Angelo State, Anthony Celso, of the newly published “Rogue Allies: The Strategic Partnership Between Iran and North Korea,” says. The North’s “biggest customer has been Iran since the 1980s,” he says.The relationship mushroomed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. “North Korea started proliferating everything to Iran, missiles, then tanks, artillery,” Mr. Bechtol says. “Since 1983, Iran has been the buyer of missile systems, North Korea has been the seller.”

‘Nothing More Than Souped-Up No Dongs’: The North Korean Roots of Iranian Missiles Raining Down on Israel

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