Yep, I think that is exactly what he is doing. He has limited supplies of Plutonium and U235. As I understand it, extracting deuterium from seawater is fairly straight forward. He can build a large arsenal of H bombs with the plutonium he has on hand as initiators.
Idiots in the MSM, and many politicians, would leap to the assumption of a fission device first (that's the way we did it).
As a technology industry denizen, what we tend to see in developing countries is leap frogging. We spend the billions and trillions developing it in the West. The Chinese steal it, adapt it, and then pop out on the spectrum with the version of the product you've got - about 18 development months behind yours.
This is consistent with that. Fission? Why do it? To expensive.
Hydrogen Bomb - More destructive and takes less fissionable material.