Reading Kim Jong-Un’s mind as he reads the fine print of Iran nuclear agreement

Special to WorldTribune.com

DonKirk3By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

The Greeks made a deal to reform their free-spending ways and stay in the European Union, while the Iranians agreed to restrain their nuclear ambitions and crawl out from under onerous sanctions. Can anyone imagine two such crucial agreements in the space of two days?

After all those happy handshakes, you have to wonder what Kim Jong-Un is thinking about it all from his palatial enclave in Pyongyang.

Might he feel a little left out, ignored, lonely and isolated ― or is he breathing defiance, vowing, “They’ll never push me into a corner”? Whatever he thinks, it’s a cinch he’s been reading the fine text of the Iranian nuclear deal.

“What’s in it for me,” he’s got to be asking. “Will Iran, free of sanctions, have more money and freedom to import my missiles? And will my Iranian friends still want to cooperate on my program for exploding nuclear devices with highly enriched uranium? What about all those centrifuges for enriching my uranium? Will Iran be sending a lot more of them?”

The North Korea-Iran strategic partnership that is rarely mentioned.
The North Korea-Iran strategic partnership that is rarely mentioned.

The implications of the Iran deal for North Korea are disturbing. Sure, the deal inhibits Iran from building nuclear warheads, at least for a while, but North Korea may not have too much to worry about. Consider all the much needed foreign exchange the North can make if indeed Iran imports its Scuds and Rodongs in greater numbers than ever.

Iran, swimming in the money it can now make from exporting oil to countries that had to abide by sanctions, has more than enough to pay whatever North Korea is asking.

Who’s going to stop and board boats carrying container loads of the stuff that the North needs to sell to bolster its impoverished economy and Iran needs to buy to swing its weight around the Middle East?

Then again, Kim Jong-Un may be a little envious. How come Iran avoids sanctions while the sanctions imposed by South Korea more than five years ago after the sinking of the Cheonan remain in place? And that’s to say nothing about all those other nuisance sanctions that the United Nations has slapped on North Korea after those three nuclear and missile tests. Easy to say that sanctions don’t do a whole lot of good, that there are ways to avoid them, but North Korea’s invective suggests that they’re a pain nonetheless.

If nothing else, however, the Iranian deal offers possibilities that North Korea has to love.

More ardent fans of the deal are saying, “OK, we’ve gotten Iran to give up on becoming a nuclear-weapons state. With Iran on board, let’s persuade North Korea, which already has a bunch of nukes, to knock it off.

Kim has to love the logic. No, he’s not going to give up a nuclear program that’s enshrined in North Korea’s constitution, but he’ll be able to resume talks from a position of wishful thinking.

There will be no shortage of U.S. negotiators with fantasies of making history by bringing North Korea to terms.

Remember Chris Hill? That’s what he was thinking, too, when he got North Korea to sign those phony-baloney agreements in 2007 for North Korea to give up its nukes on a fanciful, forgotten schedule that isn’t worth repeating here.

And who can forget the “Leap Year agreement” of February 29, 2012, in which one of Hill’s successors, Glyn Davies, had North Korea committed to a “moratorium” on nuclear and missile testing? Less than two months later, North Korea flouted the whole deal by putting a satellite into orbit ― an exercise designed to test the North’s fearsome Taepodong missile with a long enough range to reach the U.S. mainland.

The idea of removal of sanctions is just what Kim needs to follow the Iranian lead. He’ll be able to insist, sure, get rid of those sanctions, and then we can go ahead with the other stuff you’re asking. South Korea might be the first to respond. The theory is there’s no need for Seoul to stop South Koreans from doing business in North Korea, as forbidden outside the Kaeseong special zone, when so much free enterprise and cross-border trade goes on with China.

Maybe so, but you may be sure, whatever happens, more talks will do nothing to persuade North Korea to abandon its membership in the elite group of nine nuclear-weapons powers. In fact, more likely, North Korea will be a beneficiary of the agreement ― proponents of talking to the North will press on with ever more confidence while North Korea profits from all the business it will be doing with Iran in exchange for cheap oil.

It’s even possible North Korea and Iran will resume exchanging insights and expertise on building nuclear warheads. Can the agreement stop nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians from talking to each other?

For that reason alone, Kim has got to be happy.

Donald Kirk has been covering the North Korean nuclear issue for years. He’s reachable at kirkdon4343@gmail.com.

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