Proliferation Connection
By Andy Jackson

Iran and North Korea are locked arm-in-arm in their pursuit of nuclear and missile proliferation, to the detriment of regional security on opposite ends of Asia.

The threats posed by North Korea and Iran are certainly nothing new. A U.S. State Department report on March 1, 2006 (released several months before North Korea's nuclear test in October of that year) stated: ``Iran and North Korea continue to present the greatest challenges to international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons." Both nations have had nuclear programs for over two decades.

While it is difficult to gauge how closely Pyongyang and Tehran have been cooperating, there are a few things we do know.

In January of 2007, Pyongyang agreed to provide Tehran with data from its nuclear test in October 2006 and invited a team of Iranian experts to North Korea to observe is first nuclear test. European defense officials at the time expressed concerns that North Korean expertise had helped Iran accelerate its own nuclear weapons program.

To make matters worse, international officials find it difficult to accurately gauge how far Iran's nuclear program has progressed. While Tehran would be hard pressed to match Pyongyang's cachet for maintaining secrecy, it does have the advantage of having remote mountain outposts far removed from international borders and sea-lanes. The Iranian government successfully hid the Natanz uranium enrichment center and other nuclear sites until dissidents exposed their existence in the summer of 2002.

The two regimes also cooperate on missiles. Former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph noted in September of 2006 that North Korea had become ``the principal supplier to Iran of ballistic missile technologies."

The similarities between Iranian and North Korean missiles are due to more than the fact that both are based on old Soviet designs. The Arms Control Association has reported that Iran's Shahab-3 missile, which can reach as far as Greece, is based on North Korea's Nodong-A missile, and was developed ``with North Korean expertise."

The assistance has been mutual. The Japanese newspaper, Sankei Shimbun, reported this spring that a 15-man Iranian team traveled to North Korea last March to observe the April 4 launch of the Taepodong-2 missile and to provide technical assistance. That is part of a regular pattern of Iranian military advisors visiting North Korea to participate in missile tests.

So what can the rest of the world (or at least those nations that have a concern with such things) do to disrupt or slow down cooperation between North Korea and Iran on their nuclear weapon and missile programs? The familiar and depressing answer is ``not much."

However, ``not much" is not the same thing as ``nothing."

While controlling the movement of experts between Iran and North Korea is difficult, the United States and its allies can limit the movement of materials and constrict financial transactions related to the missile and nuclear programs.

To that end, the U.S. Treasury Department sought to freeze the assets of Hong Kong Electronics, located in Iran, along with North Korea's Tanchon Commercial Bank and Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation for their transferring of ``millions of dollars of proliferation-related funds." While it is unlikely that those companies have assets within reach of the Treasury Department, the designation with make those companies toxic to the international banking system and severely limit their ability to conduct financial transactions.

The U.N. resolution 1874, which prohibits North Korea from exporting any weapons, has also proven to be surprisingly effective so far. The Kangnam 1, a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weapons and tracked by the U.S. navy under 1874, was forced to return to North Korea rather than its intended destination, believed to have been Myanmar.

North Korea earns several hundred million dollars a year through arms sales. Cutting Pyongyang's ability to ship its missiles and receive payments will cause its missile program, and to an extent, the nuclear program partially paid for with money raised by missile sales to partially wither on the vine.

The continued success of these efforts is dependent on the cooperation of China, which is unlikely. As noted at the blog, One Free Korea, China has long had associations with both North Korea's and Iran's proliferation programs. Chinese companies such as the defense-industrial enterprise NORINCO, Zibo Chemnet and China Aero Technology, among others, have been sanctioned for their proliferation activities involving North Korea or Iran.

China has long been content to let North Korea bedevil Seoul, Tokyo and Washington. One of the few successes of the six-party process has been to make North Korean provocations blows to China's prestige and thus increases pressure on Beijing to bring Pyongyang to heal. Despite that, China is unlikely to completely abandon Pyongyang.

So the best we can hope for is to delay, rather than stop, North Korean and Iranian proliferation programs through sanctions while we seek other means of ending them.

Andy Jackson has taught courses on American government and has been writing on Korean politics and other issues for four years. He can be reached at andyinrok@lycos.com.