Did North Korea proliferate to Iran, too?
An Israeli news site reports that North Korea aided Iran’s nuclear program with nuclear technology and material, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz (ht to a reader):
According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran’s secret nuclear arms program.
U.S. and Israeli officials agreed last week that the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, scheduled to take place in Singapore tomorrow, should be used to pressure Pyongyang to disclose its nuclear cooperation with countries in the Middle East. As a pressure tactic, U.S. officials could reveal details of North Korea’s cooperation with Syria to Congress.
Foreign news sources reported that in addition to helping Syria build the nuclear facility that Israel attacked, North Korea sent engineers and various materials to the site. Israel and the U.S. fear that Pyongyang could be doing even more to boost Iran’s nuclear program.
During their talks in Washington last week with high-ranking officials, Yoram Turbowicz and Shalom Turjeman, advisers to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, agreed that the details of the air strike would be released by the Americans. Israel would continue to decline commenting on the matter, as it has done since September, and would not alter its censorship policy. [Haaretz]
The Daily NK also passes on the report. I wish I knew enough about Haaretz to trust it as a source, but there have been other reports of North Korean nuclear technicians in Iran. In 2003, Heritage analyst Peter Brookes claimed that the number of North Koreans in Iran was enough to warrant “an exclusive Caspian Sea resort for their use.” We also know that Iran’s missile technology had a lot of North Korean help.
It seems plausible, but I’d like to see some other source corroborate this.
one of the earliest congressional record is a hearing that Sen. Peter Fitzgerald held in a Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing back in 2003. A technician testified behind a panel regarding his clandestine trip to Iran. the hearing record should be available. see this: http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/08019Pinkston.pdf
Though it does seem more likely that DPRK nuclear techs would have more experience with plutonium than uranium, which would not be too useful in Iran, it’s plausible, for example, that North Korea has no centrifuges b/c they sold them all to Iran… a fire sale of sorts.