North Korea expands its nuclear arsenal after witnessing Iran’s vulnerability

Kim Jong-un’s speech to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly last week could have been reduced to a simple “I told you so.”

Ever since becoming leader in 2011, Kim has made his nuclear weapons program a national goal — almost a doctrine — arguing it is the only way for smaller powers to keep from being “mercilessly violated” by superpowers.

The current Mideast war, he told North Korea’s parliament, proves that “the true guarantee of a state’s existence” is a nuclear deterrent — and he vowed to expand it.

“That’s their ultimate life insurance policy,” said former Canadian diplomat James Trottier, who led four official missions to Pyongyang.

After watching U.S. attempts at forced regime change in Iran — and previously in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan — “it reinforces their beliefs that they need their nuclear program for regime survival,” Trottier said.

Kim has never made a secret of his nuclear and missile ambitions. This past weekend, official photos included the supreme leader observing tests of upgraded “military muscle,” a fiery engine designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland. 

Earlier in March, Kim made a show of sending 10 ballistic missiles 350 kilometres into the Sea of Japan, in defiance of military exercises being held between U.S. and South Korean forces. 

And so it went with cruise missiles, tanks and artillery, on display in North Korea as war raged in the Middle East. 

Bitter words also flew out of Pyongyang, denouncing the U.S. and its “vassal” Israel as “rogue nations” carrying out “villainous acts” of war — reminiscent of Iran’s chants of “death to America.”

And yet, there is no big U.S. military campaign against North Korea. No loud threats from Washington. Not even a mention of North Korea in the latest U.S. National Security Strategy, which lists worldwide dangers. 

Iran, by contrast, is called a “chief destabilizing force” in that same report.

U.S. worried about Iran, but not North Korea

The U.S. and Israel have justified the war against Iran as imperative because they say it has a nuclear weapons program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the threat “existential.” Without military action, he said, “we will face a nuclear Iran… that will work to destroy us.”

Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes only, pointing to a “fatwa,” or religious ban, on the development of nuclear weapons issued by former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the mid-1990s.

So why is Iran a target and not North Korea? 

It’s because Kim Jong-un already has “robust” nuclear deterrence, said Ankit Panda, an expert on geopolitics and author of Kim Jong-Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea.

Any attack on North Korea could quickly turn into a dangerous standoff between two nuclear powers, with Kim even better armed than he was seven years ago, when negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump to curtail Kim’s arsenal collapsed.

North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities are better tested and more advanced than during Trump’s first term. 

“They’re more mature nuclear operators,” said Panda.

The Washington-based Arms Control Association estimates North Korea now has at least 50 assembled nuclear warheads and enough radioactive material for 70 to 90 nuclear weapons. 

Before the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran last June, North Korea had an estimated 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, but had not yet assembled a nuclear weapon. The program was developed in underground bunkers, and largely hidden from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, who said last month that as far as they know, “Iran did not have a program.” 

Has Trump lost interest in North Korea?

Still, suspicions linger. International observers say Iran could have assembled five to eight fission weapons in a matter of weeks. Making that into a missile would have taken significantly longer. 

“That work has not continued, as far as we know” after the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran in June 2025, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Despite the North Korean threat, Trump seems to have lost interest in Pyongyang since he decided to “walk away” from attempts to negotiate an end to Kim’s nuclear obsession over three high-profile summits.

That bromance — complete with what Trump called “love letters” between them — may have fizzled, but there seem to be no hard feelings. Since re-election, Trump’s only dig at Kim came when the North Korean leader joined Russian and Chinese presidents at a Beijing military parade last September. Trump called the trio an “axis of upheaval” in a social media post.

Washington says Russia has provided North Korea with “defence co-operation” — including possible technical help with its nuclear program — in exchange for at least 10,000 North Korean troops who have joined Russia’s war with Ukraine.

In the heart of Pyongyang, Kim continues to regularly celebrate his accomplishments with massive parades, a show of colourful dancers and deadly missiles.

All this despite ever more punishing UN sanctions and economic hardships endured by average North Koreans — 40 per cent of the population is undernourished, says the World Food Program — because of the hundreds of millions of dollars diverted to nuclear weapons.

Trump has never said why he considers Iran more dangerous — or, at least, a more appealing target for his military muscle. Its oil reserves are likely one factor.

Israel also reportedly plays a big part, with Netanyahu itching to attack for years to stop the regime’s nuclear program, as well as its conventional ballistic missile threats and funding for a network of proxy militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, who have targeted Israel.

Netanyahu urged Trump to join him this time. Israel has the military might to be a powerful ally, financed to the tune of billions a year by Washington — $21-billion US alone since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

North Korean denuclearization ‘off the table’

North Korea could also be considered an existential threat to two U.S. allies — South Korea and Japan — which both have American bases that in total host more than 70,000 U.S. troops. Politicians in both countries have mused about arming themselves with their own nuclear deterrent, but it hasn’t happened.

Seoul is within 50 kilometres of the nearest North Korean arsenal — half the distance from Vancouver to Victoria.

And there is strong evidence Kim has already helped Iran with its weapons program.

“North Korea’s Nodong missile, for instance, is the template for the Iranian Shahab-3,” said analyst Panda.

Even during the Trump-Kim summits four years ago, Kim’s nuclear technology was reliable enough that American presidents would “really not take the chance in attacking North Korea in a future crisis,” Panda said.

But if Trump has ruled out a military attack as too risky, what options does Washington have?

Most experts urge negotiations, though Kim would now drive a much harder bargain after watching how the U.S. is acting against Kim, says Rachel Minyoung Lee from the Stimson Center’s Korea Program.

She says North Korea’s denuclearization is now “off the table.”

“If there was any possibility of meaningful engagement between the two countries before what’s happening right now in Iran, I think the bar has gotten much higher. Any future nuclear negotiations just get tougher to resume,” she said.

In the wake of last June’s attacks on Iran, Pyongyang has demanded “the recognition of the irreversible position [of North Korea] as a nuclear weapons state” as a precondition for any agreement on limits to its arsenal.

For any country thinking of building a nuclear deterrent — including Iran — the best way for the U.S. to handle it is to try to negotiate away its “most serious nuclear capabilities, and a pathway to the bomb,” said Kimball from the Arms Control Association. 

Even the most successful military campaign “cannot bomb away a well-established, well-distributed nuclear infrastructure and the knowledge that stands behind that,” he said.

Iran may now be more determined than ever to arm itself, in order to deter future attacks…. as Kim seems to have done.