How North Korea Proliferates to Iran and Syria

Foreign Affairs ^ | June 6, 2018 | Bruce E. Bechtol Jr.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

International attention in recent years has understandably centered on Pyongyang’s advances in nuclear weapons technology and the question of whether North Korea can be convinced to denuclearize. This focus, however, has tended to obscure the fact that North Korea’s military development serves two purposes. The first is the ability to intimidate and threaten both its neighbors in the region and the United States. The second, less well-known purpose is to proliferate weapons—conventional, unconventional, and weapons of mass destruction—to desperate and unstable regions around the world in exchange for hard currency.

Some have said that North Korea’s proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to other rogue states represents a redline, but that bridge has already been crossed.

For decades, North Korea has proliferated weapons, including conventional arms, ballistic missiles, and chemical agents, to states such as Iran and Syria (and by extension to their nonstate proxies), helping them to evade international sanctions and providing them with the necessary technical and military assistance to develop their own weapons programs.

Perhaps the most visible instance of North Korean proliferation can be seen in Syria, where the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, largely financed by his patrons in Tehran, has purchased and deployed North Korean weapons against his own people throughout the course of the country’s seven-year civil war.

North Korea has used a variety of tricks to make these sales in the face of international sanctions. Pyongyang has used sealed diplomatic shipments, which are normally not inspected, and foreign front companies to avoid interdiction. The Panel of Experts report identified 39 shipments from North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017, most of them sending arms, including chemical weapons.

North Korea’s best customer, however, is not Syria but Iran...

[Steely Tom]

This has been known for at least 15 years.

[thoughtomator]

It’s from the Council on Foreign Relations, which means both the timing and contents ought to be viewed as sinister.

[Sa-teef]

Transfer of fissile material or worst case nuclear bombs to Syria or Iran at this point is certainly not out of the realm of possibilities. they are pretty desperate for cash at the moment and Assad has a scheduled meeting with Rocketman in the weeks ahead.

[McGruff]

Iran and North Korea colluding. I’d be shocked. /sarc

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Assad has a scheduled meeting with Rocketman in the weeks ahead.

Bingo. The Assad family's personal, not just political relationship to the Kim dynasty goes back generations. There even a recently dedicated park and monument named for Kim Il-Sung in Damascus.

Also interesting how geopolitics comes full circle after President Trump took Bashar Al-Assad to task last April for his chemical weapons programs. North Korea likely provided some of those.

[grania]

Troops have been in NK for 68 years. Ike warned about the military-industrial complex when he left office. The MIC is still waging endless war. It seems that every country that has national resources or geography we want has an evil leader who must be eliminated and terrorists we must defeat. Has it occurred to anyone that European/US colonialism and regime change initiatives are the problem? And Condaleeza Rice has a real lot to do with GWB's awful decisions?