TEL AVIV – Amid reports that Iran is assisting North Korea with its nuclear program, Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren asked the international community at what point it would intervene.
Oren, who is also the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tweeted, “British officials say Iran assists North Korean nuclear program. No surprise, but what’s the world going to do about it?”
Earlier on Sunday, London-based newspaper the Telegraph cited unnamed senior British officials as saying that the likelihood North Korean scientists had managed its recent achievements in the nuclear arena without assistance from outside was nil.
“North Korean scientists are people of some ability, but clearly they’re not doing it entirely in a vacuum,” one government minister said.
Another Foreign Office source said, “For them to have done this entirely on their own stretches the bounds of credulity.”
Iran was named as the most likely collaborator, with Russia second, the report said.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson last week also implied that North Korea had received help.
“There is currently an investigation into exactly how the country has managed to make this leap in technological ability,” he said. “We are looking at the possible role that may have been played, inadvertently or otherwise, by some current and former nuclear states.”
North Korea has recently boasted of having the capability to fire ballistic missiles targeting the U.S., in addition to having manufactured miniature nuclear warheads to fit on ICBMs.
Last month, it successfully carried out an H-bomb test. READ MORE
