The Iran nuclear deal is silent on an issue that the CIA and proliferation experts are concerned about: that Tehran may outsource parts of its nuclear and missiles program to the secretive regime in North Korea, which on Tuesday committed itself to producing more fuel for nuclear bombs, The Washington Times reported on Wednesday.
CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged Tuesday his agency is monitoring whether the regime in Iran may try to assist its clandestine nuclear program with help from another rogue state such as North Korea, or by colluding with Pyongyang toward the secret purchase and transfer of nuclear weapons for Tehran.
“We have to make sure that we’re doing whatever we can to uncover anything,” Mr. Brennan told a group of reporters in Austin, Texas. “I’m not saying that something is afoot at all — what I’m saying is that we need to be attuned to all of the potential pathways to acquiring different types of [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities.”
Experts say the deal worked out by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry carries no known prohibition against North Korea performing the Iranian regime’s nuclear arms research, paid out of the $100 billion to $150 billion the deal frees up in Iranian assets.
While there is heated debate over the extent of collusion between Iran and North Korea, evidence of collaboration has piled up for years in public source information even as the Obama administration and the U.S. intelligence community remain mum about such reports.
Larry Niksch, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has been tracking the Iran-North Korea nexus for decades.
“There appears to be little in the Iran nuclear agreement that would prevent Iran from continuing or increasing its personnel and financial investments in North Korea’s future missile and nuclear warhead programs,” Mr. Niksch told a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in July. “It seems to me that North Korea may receive from Iran upwards of $2 [billion] to $3 billion annually from Iran for the various forms of collaboration between them.”
North Korea, which announced Tuesday it has restarted its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor, already owns nuclear weapons.
“There’s a growing evidence that Iran and North Korea have not only been cooperating on missile programs but also in the nuclear field,” said Rep. Ted Poe, a Texas Republican. “[In] media reports as far back as 1993, there are indications that the Iranians financed North Korea’s nuclear program with $500 million in return for nuclear technology.”
According to The Washington Times, Mr. Niksch testified that the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the largest opposition group to the hard-line Islamic state, reported that a delegation of North Korean missile and nuke experts visited Iran last May, the third such tour this year.
“Iranian money appears to be the lubricant for North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs,” he said. “The Iran nuclear agreement will increase Iran’s wealth considerably as U.N. economic sanctions are lifted and Iran receives at least $50 billion from the United States in frozen assets.”
The Washington Times reported on September 4 that the NCRI has released a new report claiming Iran’s regime has been working with North Korean experts to deceive U.N. nuclear inspectors visiting suspect sites in Iran.
“Iran’s clerical regime has been working on ways to conceal the military dimensions of its nuclear projects from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for some time and sought the advice and expertise of North Korean consultants to do so, according to the report from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI),” The Washington Times said.
The Washington Times said the NCRI is seen to have “deep sources inside Iran’s nuclear community and its members are credited with having made game-changing revelations about Tehran’s activities in the past.”
“Similar NCRI claims in the early 2000s exposed the existence of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy-water plutonium facility — two operations that have been at the center of international scrutiny and distrust of Tehran during the years since then.”
“According to the latest report, a number of North Korean officials have set up shop in Tehran and remain there even after the signing of the nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and major world powers on July 14.”
“The North Korean visitors ‘have expertise in ballistic missile and nuclear work areas, particularly in the field of warheads and missile guidance,’ the report reads.”
“‘Over the past two years the North Korean teams have been sharing their experiences and tactics necessary for preventing access to military nuclear sites,’ NCRI added.”
“The North Koreans reportedly instructed their Iranian counterparts on how to deny IAEA inspectors access to their nuclear sites and advised them to build tunnels and underground nuclear sites.”
“Their presence in Tehran has been kept secret with the help of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
“The nuclear experts work in a guarded office building at the Hemmat complex and are transported to and from work in tinted-glass vehicles escorted by members of the terrorist-affiliated Quds force.”
“In addition, the six-man North Korean team reportedly collaborates with Nouri Industries, which builds warheads for Shabab and Ghadr missiles. Nouri also works closely with a subdivision of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, also known by its Farsi acronym SPND.”
The NCRI first exposed SPND in July 2011, prompting the U.S. to place the research facility on its sanctions list as an “entity that is primarily responsible for research in the field of nuclear weapons development.”
Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the NCRI’s U.S. Representative Office told The Washington Times that the information uncovered in the report “underscores the need for an effective verification and inspection regime to prevent the Iranian regime, with a two-decade-long history of deception and duplicity, from hiding its illicit activities and sanitizing the suspect sites. Anything less, prompted by political expediency, would be a recipe for disaster and only embolden the regime to continue to march towards nuclear weapons.”
The NCRI’s information was obtained through the network of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI, or MEK).
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Iran working with North Korea to thwart U.N. nuclear inspections – Washington Times