If there’s one thing that the ongoing Iran-US conflict is teaching North Korea, it is that nuclear weapons are an invaluable asset in the hermit kingdom’s toolbox. Nearly twenty years ago, Pyongyang conducted its first and far-from-successful nuclear test. Its capabilities have increased substantially since that moment and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, that of Libya’s Gaddafi in 2011, and now, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has shown Pyongyang that acquiring what the Kim regime has long-called its ‘treasured sword’ has been its most successful foreign policy decision to date. It is no surprise that only yesterday, Kim Jong-un oversaw cruise missile tests from a naval destroyer and pledged to increase the country’s arsenal of destroyers to twelve in the next five years.

It only took a day for the North Korean foreign ministry to respond to Khamenei’s ousting last Saturday. Predictably, Pyongyang repeated its decades-old rhetoric, criticising the actions of Israel and the United States as ‘an illegal act of aggression’, a ‘shameless rogue act’ and an ‘abuse’ of ‘military muscle…to realise their selfish and hegemonic ambition’.

The quartet of North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran is anything but a formalised alliance

The quartet of North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran is anything but a formalised alliance

These words were hardly surprising. After all, following the US’s strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities – in Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz – last june, Pyongyang........

© The Spectator