Could Iran buy nuclear weapons from North Korea?

Mark Fitzpatrick

Source Link

Israeli and American air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 caused extensive damage but did not extinguish the country’s desire for a nuclear option. The attacks fanned a growing mood among Iran’s security community that a nuclear deterrent is needed more than ever. For the time being, Iran apparently still adheres to Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei’s non-nuclear fatwa. Senior officials say, however, that the fatwa can be changed if circumstances warrant.

To buttress United States President Donald Trump’s premature boast that Iran’s nuclear programme was obliterated, Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted the destruction of a facility at Isfahan to convert uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to metal, a key step to producing nuclear weapons. A Pentagon spokesman said the strikes had set back Iran’s efforts by ‘probably close to two years’.

That lengthy time frame may be misleading. Independent researchers have pointed out that, to sprint for a weapon, Iran does not need to rebuild the damaged nuclear facilities. Its 400 kg of 60% highly enriched uranium (HEU), enough for ten bombs by most estimates, is in canisters that apparently are buried under rubble but could be dug out. Whether this could be done without detection is another question – and detection would likely trigger further bombing. Still, even before the June attacks, Iran was constructing a new enrichment facility at Isfahan where the HEU could be further enriched. Uranium conversion is an 80-year-old technology, a plant for which could be set up quickly.

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt to US government declarations that Iran could not easily overcome bottlenecks if it wanted to rush for a bomb, an assessment shared by Israeli military intelligence. If so, Iran would have another option. It could seek to acquire any necessary technology or materials from its old friends in Pyongyang – perhaps even a few intact warheads from North Korea’s estimated stockpile of 50–90 nuclear weapons (although this is highly speculative).

DPRK as a potential supplier

If Iran were to seek outside help, North Korea would be a natural marketplace. As charter members of the club of so-called rogue states – serial violators of international rules and norms – Iran and North Korea are natural partners and past collaborators on missiles. Both are under sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which prohibit trade in weapons technologies. For foreign technology, they thus have to turn to fellow outcast states, run their own procurement networks, or turn to criminal enterprises, such as the black market network formerly led by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who died in 2021.

North Korea is not known to have transferred nuclear technology since 2007, when the plutonium-production reactor it helped build for Syria was destroyed by an Israeli strike, which also reportedly killed several North Korean workers.