As U.S.-Iran conflict grows, North Korea's denuclearization odds may shrink | NK News

As U.S.-Iran conflict grows, North Korea's denuclearization odds may shrink | NK News



JANUARY 04, 2020

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As U.S.-Iran conflict grows, North Korea’s denuclearization odds may shrink
DPRK will likely see U.S. attack on top Iranian general as sign that nuclear weapons are necessary, experts tell NK News

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Jacob Fromer January 3, 2020
Image: NK News


A debate over President Donald Trump’s authority — and willingness — to wage war erupted in Washington on Friday after a U.S. drone killed a top Iranian military commander in Baghdad, but in Pyongyang, thousands of miles away from the Middle East, there will likely be no debate over what the attack means.

Instead, multiple North Korea experts told NK News on Friday that the DPRK’s leader, Kim Jong Un, will likely draw one critical conclusion from the U.S. military strike: nuclear weapons are the only way to keep himself and his country safe.

The American attack on the powerful Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani — and the threats that followed after his death, from both countries, of revenge and escalating violence — come as the U.S. and North Korea’s own diplomatic stalemate has now dragged on into a new year, with seemingly no end in sight.

Washington and Pyongyang have been unable to agree on a wide range of pressing concerns for both countries, including sanctions relief for the North, the fate of the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program, and the future of the U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula.

After Suleimani’s death, North Korea is likely to become even more convinced that its nuclear weapons program is indispensable, experts told NK News.

“Kim Jong Un watches everything that happens in the U.S. very, very closely,” Sue Mi Terry, senior fellow for Korea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former U.S. intelligence official, told NK News in an interview.

“This makes the North Koreans reaffirm in their mind the need to hold on to their nuclear weapons,” she said.

North Korea often cites the cases of Libya and Iraq — two countries that abandoned their nuclear weapons programs, only to become the target of U.S. military intervention years later — as the ultimate reasons why a nuclear deterrent is needed to protect a country.

Iran has also tried to build its own nuclear weapons program, but does not possess any now.

One of President Trump’s former National Security Advisors, John Bolton, once recommended the “Libya model” of denuclearization to North Korea during his tenure in the Trump administration. (Trump called those comments a “disaster” after he fired Bolton last year.)

A senior DPRK official said Bolton’s comments showed that he wanted to “impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq, which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”

But Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told NK News that the death of Suleimani will likely help convince party leaders in Pyongyang that they were not wrong.

“What it will do is reinforce in the minds of the North Korean leadership that the U.S. is an existential threat to regime survival, and the nuclear program is the only reliable means to deter U.S. aggression,” DiMaggio said.

“They likely will begin to cite the Suleimani episode as a cautionary tale, alongside the examples of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein,” she said, referring to the all-powerful leaders of Libya and Iraq who were ultimately toppled and killed.“If the U.S. persists in its hostile policy towards the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula,” Kim Jong Un reportedly said this week | Photo: KCNA

Naoko Aoki, an adjunct political scientist at the RAND Corporation, told NK News that this particular type of attack against Iran — one that “decapitates” the leadership — is the kind that Pyongyang likely fears the most.

After the news broke of Suleimani’s death, John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, said on Twitter: “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”

But Aoki added that the attack would not likely change Pyongyang’s plans.

“I think what is more likely is that this will convince North Korea to steadily build up its weapons capability, as it said it would do,” she said.

“From the North Korean perspective, this would be useful for both deterring the United States and preparing for any future opportunities to negotiate from a position of strength.”

The U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, previously made the same point himself about the DPRK’s negotiating position.

Last February, in an interview with CBS News, Pompeo was asked why the Trump administration was talking to Pyongyang, but not to Tehran. Both, after all, were adversaries of Washington.

The answer, Pompeo replied: nuclear weapons.

“We’ve made very clear that these situations are very different,” he said at the time. “North Korea today has weapons, nuclear weapons, capable of reaching the United States of America.”

“This is a threat that President Trump said we needed to take on now and take on immediately,” he said.

In 2017, North Korean propaganda called the country’s nuclear weapons a “treasured sword of justice.”In 2017, North Korean propaganda called the country’s nuclear weapons a “treasured sword of justice.” | KCNA

This week, on January 1, after months of anticipation, Kim Jong Un’s long-awaited year-end deadline for negotiations with the U.S. passed by without any signs of a deal.

The same day, DPRK state media released a lengthy report of a high-level party meeting that Kim had chaired earlier in the week.

At the meeting, known as a party plenum, the North Korean leader reportedly outlined his plans for the country in the coming year. He talked about the economy, agriculture, party organization.

But he also talked about needing nuclear weapons to defend his country against a U.S. “hostile policy” — a term the North has not explicitly defined — and even referred to President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” line from 18 years ago as an example.

“The current situation on the Korean peninsula is getting more dangerous and reaching serious phase, owing to the [U.S.] hostile policy towards the [DPRK],” Kim reportedly said.

“If the U.S. persists in its hostile policy towards the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.”

Three days into the new decade, as the Washington-Pyongyang stalemate continues, and a new threat of war grows between the U.S. and Iran, North Korea seems unlikely to change its stance now.

Neither does Washington.

“Kim Jong Un’s renewed threats underscore the need to keep the pressure on to achieve the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, told NK News.

Van Hollen was the Senate author of new sanctions against the DPRK that became law at the end of last month.

“Recent events underscore why the President should not attempt to waive these new sanctions,” he added. “We welcome additional dialogue and negotiations focused on the denuclearization of the peninsula, but the time has passed for photo ops and press summits that do not bring us any closer to our goal.”

Congressman Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky and the House author of the new sanctions, told NK News the same thing.

“Make no mistake, Congress will not relent on these tough sanctions unless and until the regime in Pyongyang makes tangible, verifiable, and irreversible progress on denuclearization,” he said.

Barr added that after the attack on Suleimani, the U.S.’s position should be clear to North Korea.

“[It] sends an important message to the world, including to Kim Jong Un and other dictators, that if attacked, the United States will respond decisively and overwhelmingly to defend its interests.”