North Korea on Monday condemned the US attacks against three of Iran’s key nuclear sites, accusing the administration of President Donald Trump of violating Iran’s territorial integrity and the United Nations Charter.“The just international community should raise the voice of unanimous censure and rejection against the US and Israel’s confrontational acts,” said a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, according to the Yonhap news agency.Pyongyang had previously described Israeli missile attacks against Iran as a “hideous act.”
North Korea ‘watching very closely what is going on in Iran’
Nuclear-armed North Korea has maintained friendly ties with Iran.For decades, Tehran and Pyongyang have been suspected of military cooperation, including in developing ballistic missiles that Iranian scientists have reportedly since enhanced. Around 20 years ago, North Korea began dispatching engineers with specialist deep tunnelling expertise.Since the three-year Korean War began in 1950, North Korea has concealed much of its own key military capabilities in underground bases.The regime will be keen to determine the effectiveness of its underground bunkers, while looking at the impact of the GBU-57 “massive ordnance penetrator” weapons dropped by the US on Iranian targets in Operation Midnight Hammer.“They are definitely watching very closely what is going on in Iran,” said Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant general in the Republic of Korea Army and now a senior fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.“I believe the conclusions that North Korea will come to will be that they need to accelerate their nuclear weapons capabilities, that they need to further fortify their storage areas,” he told DW.Chun added that the North Koreans need to adopt additional protective measures, such as enhanced air defence and retaliatory options.
Pyongyang unlikely to talk
Asked whether there is any likelihood of the attacks encouraging Pyongyang to return to dialogue, Chun said, “Absolutely not. It is just not in their nature.”Nevertheless, he said, North Korea was almost certainly as shocked as the rest of the world at the Trump administration’s “decisive nature.”“This is an America that we have not seen for a long time and would have caught the North by surprise,” Chun said.“The priority there now will be to ensure that the same thing does not happen to them, which is why I am sure they will be observing closely and accelerating their weapons programs.”Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Pyongyang will be aware that its situation is starkly different from that of Tehran, both in terms of the country’s geography, the proximity of allies and the status of the two nations’ nuclear programs.“Pyongyang’s nuclear program is much more advanced, with weapons possibly ready to launch on multiple delivery systems, including ICBMs,” he said. “The Kim [Jong Un] regime can threaten the US homeland, and Seoul is within range of many North Korean weapons of various types.”“In Iran’s case, Israel aggressively exploited Tehran’s strategic and tactical errors, using superior intelligence, technology, and training to degrade Iran’s air defences, high-value personnel and retaliatory capabilities,” he pointed out.“North Korea will learn from Iran’s mistakes, South Korea is more risk-averse than Israel and China and Russia are better-positioned to help Pyongyang than Tehran.”
Russia’s coordinates with Iran, North Korea
Easley said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will also lean on his alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said, to obtain the latest weapons and technology and in sufficient amounts to preserve his regime.“It is no coincidence that Moscow was quick to host Iran’s foreign minister after the US strikes, and that Putin sent [Defence Minister] Sergei Shoigu to meet Kim Jong Un while the G7 was gathering in Canada,” he said.“Russia’s coordination with Iran and North Korea shows how security across multiple regions is increasingly linked.”Ultimately, however, Chun said Kim’s priority is ensuring his own personal safety and the future of the only hereditary communist dictatorship.And he will have been deeply alarmed at Trump’s hints that the US military knew where Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was hiding and that he favours regime change in Tehran.“Even now, Kim is very well protected from the threat of a ‘decapitation strike,’ with veils of secrecy around his location and movements,” Chun said.“I am sure he will maintain that secrecy and make sure that the information on his whereabouts at any time is as limited as possible.”