Why It Was Time To Fold Iran's Nuclear Aspirations
"Iran
continued supporting acts of terrorism through its proxies and partner
groups -- such as Hezbollah, Ansar Allah [Houthis], Hamas and al-Ashtar
Brigades -- in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon. Palestine, Syria and Yemen."
"[Iran is the world's] leading state sponsor of terrorism."
"[The
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] has supported terrorist]
recruitment, financing and plotting across Africa, Asia, Europe and the
Americas."
U.S. State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2023
"Over
the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted
dissidents, western opponents, Israelis and Jews in assassination plots,
abduction plots and surveillance operation that facilitate both."
"Iran has carried out such external operations around the world."
Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, 2022 study
Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran on June 20.Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
Last
month the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that
found Iran had stockpiled sufficient enriched uranium to build nine
nuclear bombs. The IAEA chastised the regime for its attempts to shield
areas of its nuclear program from their inspectors. The regime is known
to have been developing weapons able to carry out its plans to
annihilate Israel, enriching uranium to 60 percent, a short step from
producing the 90 percent enrichment for the creation of an atomic bomb.
Iran's
fixation on destroying Israel is not a covert operation. In 2005,
then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the General
Assembly of the United Nations and spoke of the need to see that Israel
was "wiped off the map".
He spoke too of the otherworldly aura he felt surrounding him,
attributable to the unseen presence of the Hidden Mahdi, soon to be
revealed, and with that the world would be destroyed, Armageddon. Only
those faithful to Islam would be guaranteed a place in Heaven.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Photo: Justin Lane/EPA
That
guarantee would be assured only for Shi'ite Muslims, all others would
perish; non-Muslims and Muslims in the majority who practise the Sunni
version of the faith. Until that blessed event occurred, the Islamic
Republic focused on destroying the Jewish state, a long tradition of
violent enmity targeting Jews that turned afterward on others deemed
unfit to live. The fascist element of most such ideologies. Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei spoke of Israel as a "cancerous tumour" to be "removed and eradicated".
This man of God, albeit the God of Islam, advocated on his website for a "final solution"
to address Israel's existence; reminiscent of the Nazi genocidal
fixation that produced the Holocaust. Through its proxy terrorist
militias in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, as their benefactor, inciting
them to act on behalf of Islam's injunction to jihad, the Islamic
Republic tutored and armed and financed strategies of terrorist attacks
against Israel over the years, culminating in the Hamas invasion of
October 7, 2023 of southern Israel resulting in thousands of terrorists
and Gaza civilians raping, looting, torturing, murdering Israeli
children, women, and the elderly.
Hamas
is still holding 52 dead and living Israelis as hostages, of the
original 250 that were abducted out of Israel and held by terrorists and
Palestinian civilians in inhumane conditions of starvation, torture and
sensory deprivation. That was the latest mass atrocity forced on
Israel. Previous events included attacks on international Jewish targets
by Iran's proxies in past years in South America, that terrorized Jews,
destroyed their institutions, and left diaspora Jews to mourn their
dead.
Ukraine
Airlines Flight 752 was shot down in 2020 by the IRGC -- ostensibly
confusing the civilian airliner with an incoming U.S. missile -- after
take-off from Tehran, killing all 175 passengers and crew on board.
Iran's dread reputation as one of the world's most lethally ruthless
regimes posing a threat to other countries has been well earned. Iran
ranks 163 of 165 countries listed on the "Human Freedom Index" published
by the Cato and Fraser Institutes. Iranian civilians are repressed and
oppressed by their ruling mullahs. Women are forced to adhere to a
strict dress code or face imprisonment and sometimes death.
When
Iranians rebelled in 2022 after the arrest and murder of 22-year-old
Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman whose crime was failure to wear a
hijab in the prescribed manner, the regime cracked down to the extent of
killing an estimated 550 protesters, and arresting close to 20,000
demonstrators. Iran's sharia code of law saw it carrying out executions
yearly at a rate far exceeding any other country. Some 975 people were
hanged last year, among them political dissidents and those arrested for
protesting Mahsa Amini's murder.
An Israeli Air Force pilot is seen heading to an F-16 fighter jet before
taking off for strikes in Iran, in a handout photo published June 22,
2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
It
was past time for the Islamic Republic's aspiration to achieve nuclear
status to be forcefully denied, when negotiations to persuade it to
relinquish its nuclear plans fell on deaf ears. Israel began an aerial
bombardment over a week ago to destroy Iran's nuclear plants. In the
process with pinpoint accuracy the Israeli Airforce eradicated leading
political, military, nuclear-scientific and IRGC figures involved in
strategies meant to annihilate Israel.
The
bombardment was relentless, hitting nuclear plants, military bases,
IRGC training centers, and the regime's national network towers. Iranian
airports were hit, planes destroyed, the country's naval bases hit as
well as their ships. Israeli planes flew over Jordanian airspace,
refuelled in midflight and continued on to Iran, hitting the capital
Tehran, in its planned mission to destroy Iran's nuclear program, and
its ballistic missile production sites and weapons depots.
Iran
counter-attacked, sending drones and missiles into Israel. Most of the
projectiles were met in midair by Israeli defense technology. Those
that landed generally did so in open spaces. It was, for the most part,
debris from the drones and missiles hit en route before landing, that
caused most of the damage, on falling to earth. But there were some
direct missile hits, causing injury and death to Israelis, in
fortunately small numbers. Warning sirens sent people to bomb shelters,
interrupting the course of normal days for over a week.
"[Israel is] very, very close [to achieving its goals in Iran]. We are setting them back, we are removing the threat."
"We won’t pursue our actions beyond what is needed to achieve [the
goals], but we also won’t finish too soon. When the objectives are achieved,
then the operation is complete and the fighting will stop."
"I have no doubt that this is a regime that wants to wipe us out, and
that’s why we embarked on this operation to eliminate the two concrete
threats to our existence: the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile
threat. We are moving step by step towards achieving these goals. We are
very, very close to completing them."
"I told him [President Trump' of our need to act, and he understood it very well. And I
knew that when push comes to shove, he would do the right thing. He would do the right thing for America. He would do the
right thing for the free world. He would do the right thing for
civilization."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Members
of the Israeli security forces check the apparent remains of an Iranian
ballistic missile lying on the ground on the outskirts of Qatzrin,
Golan Heights, Israel, on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Photo by MICHAEL
GILADI/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty
The
United States under its president, Donald Trump, made a decision to get
involved, using the only heavy-duty bombs capable of penetrating the
mountain fastness of Iran's major uranium-processing installation at
Fordow. With all of Iran's major nuclear plants destroyed, its airforce
now decimated, its naval fleet destroyed and its leadership in disarray,
what could not be accomplished through diplomacy has now seen success
through the medium of armed conflict.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine speaks during a news conference at
the Pentagon in Washington, June 22, 2025, after the US military struck
three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to destroy the
country’s nuclear program. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
"We are not in an easy situation. The enemy is increasing its army."
"Our
people are braver and need more powerful weapons. We will pass it on
[Ukrainian flag ] and pass it on from the boys [Ukrainian servicemen at
the front] to the Congress, to the president of the United States."
"We are grateful for their support, but it is not enough."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Washington visit
"We have no restrictions on funding. The country and the government are giving the army everything it is asking for."
"We're not going to militarize our country or our economy. We simply don't need it."
"[Russia's nuclear arsenal remains the main guarantee for our security and territorial integrity".
Russian President Vladimir Putin
The launch of Russia’s new ‘Sarmat’ or ‘Satan II’ intercontinental
ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk on 20
April 2022
While
Russia is destroying its neighbour's territorial integrity, its
president remains focused on his own 'territorial integrity'. Which
includes of course annexed territories Putin has torn from its rightful
owner. Both countries have exhausted their supplies of munitions.
Hundreds of missiles are shot off by both sides daily; from the Russian
military to strike at Ukraine's civilian infrastructure; from the
Ukrainian counteroffensive to rout the Russians and to strike down their
missiles before they hit their targets.
Western
intelligence estimates that 100,000 servicemen on both sides have died
in this contest of wills and war machinery. On average 500 members of
each side's military are killed daily. Numbers hard to credit
considering the wholesale bloodbath they represent. Which does not
include the tens of thousands of civilians injured and killed by
continual Russian attacks and deliberate murder.
Ukraine's
dire need for additional munitions to allow it to continue its hugely
successful counteroffensive which has succeeded in good measure in
pushing back Russian troops, securing some of the territory that Russia
had declared incorporated into the Russian Federation. The rate at which
munitions are being used is unsustainable. The manufacture of
replacement weapons in the West is unable to keep pace with the
dwindling arsenals.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin, left, and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery
Gerasimov in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 21, 2022. (Mikhail Kuravlev,
Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Vladimir
Putin has declared yet again his intention to continue pursuing his
goal; destroying Ukraine and enriching Russia in the process. He is now
claiming that he has the most profound love for Ukraine, brotherly love
that moans in pain at Ukraine's losses. But it is not his fault that
Russia's 'special military operation' has destroyed Ukraine's power
grids leaving its people to freeze in the dark without water and
sufficient medical supplies.
The
nefariously malicious actions of the United States whose purpose it is
to destroy Russia is to blame, along with its manipulations through
NATO, intruding on Russia's near abroad despite Moscow's warning that it
was intolerable, that its incursions toward the former Soviet
satellites' wish to join NATO impairs Russia's security. Leaving the
Kremlin no option but to impose its own response on Ukraine as a lesson
to the Baltic nations that their future is with Russia, not NATO.
Russia's
defence minister Sergei Shoigu, has requested that his army's strength
be increased from a million to one-and-a-half million troops. When it
was announced months ago that new recruits were needed, a rushed
stampede of Russian men sought to salvage their futures by fleeing
abroad. New recruits were brought to the front insufficiently trained
and ill equipped. Where will another half-million fighting men be drawn
from?
Mercenaries
and reluctant holdbacks, raising the age of acceptable qualifications
to fight the noble fight until the goal has been achieved. The earlier
mobilization saw drafted men reporting reluctantly at the front lines
lacking adequate kit, but this is not to happen again; corruption and
inefficiency and poor management are to become the sins of the past. In
praising the performance of the Russian army, no mention was made of
Russian losses in Ukraine on the battlefield.
Next on the agenda for the Russian Army, receipt of state-of-the-art Sarmat (Satan II) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying ten nuclear warheads and decoys.
The
launch of Russia’s new ‘Sarmat’ or ‘Satan II’ intercontinental
ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk on 20
April 2022 EPA
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears on screens as he speaks
via a video link at the opening session of the International Crimea
Platform Parliamentary summit, organized by Ukraine and Croatia, in
Zagreb, on Tuesday. (Damir Sencar/AFP/Getty Images)
"Our
countries made clear that we all reject Russia's transparently false
allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own
territory."
"The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation."
France, Britain, United States joint statement
"[The
aim of a] dirty bomb [attack by Ukraine would be to blame the resulting
radioactive contamination on Russia by accusing Moscow of detonating a
low-grade nuclear weapon]."
"The
aim of the provocation would be to accuse Russia of using a weapon of
mass destruction in the Ukrainian military theatre and by that means to
launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world."
Russian Defence Ministry
"If
Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it
means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this."
"So
when today the Russian Minister of Defence organizes a phone carousel
and calls foreign ministers with stories about the so-called 'dirty'
nuclear bomb, everyone understands who is the source of everything dirty
that can be imagined in this war."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ukrainian National Guard soldiers fire at Russian positions with a mortar near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Andrii Marienko/The Associated Press)
Ukrainian
forces are advancing toward the Dnipro River, a counteroffensive to
retake Kherson the province and the city, from Russian occupation. All
the more disconcerting to the Kremlin in the wake of its announcement of
the annexation of the area along with three other south-eastern areas
of Ukraine. Following hard on claims that those four provinces are
Russian territory, Moscow advised the world and Ukraine in particular,
that any action taken to recover the territory would be construed as an
'act of war' against Russia.\, with predictble consequences including
nuclear.
A
sanctimonious charge so arse-backwardly absurd it would make a good
script for a theatrical comedy lampooning Russia, if it were not so
obviously the work of a land-grabbing, nation-destroying, anti-human
rights national government whose invasion exploits are the stuff of
nightmares. A self-righteousness so deranged that the Russian Defence
Minister Sergei Shoigu had the unmitigated call to to call his
counterpart ministers of France, Britain and the United States to inform
them of an odious plot Ukraine was engaging in.
In
fact it became almost instantly transparent that the revelation was in
reverse order; that Russia is scheming to make use of a radioactive bomb
of limited power and range that would be used as 'evidence' of
Ukraine's willingness to begin a nuclear war between Russia and NATO,
spurring Russia to self-protection, to respond in kind. Not Russia's
fault, goes the plotline, if the 'neo-Nazi' government of Ukraine
provoked Russia to such an extent it had little option but to
reciprocate.
In
a follow-up call with Russia's military Chief of General Staff Valery
Gerasimov, British Chief of Defence Staff Tony Radakin made it quite
clear his government rejected the Russian allegations, even while taking
pains to convey the sensible message that both sides continue to
maintain open channels of communication as a vital commitment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked to comment on Western skepticism of Russia's Ukraine accusations, responded "their disbelief doesn't mean there's no threat. The threat is evident."
In ostensible response to which Moscow has ordered civilian evacuation
of the territory in advance of the Ukrainian forces' advance. Should
Russia suffer a defeat in Kherson it would represent a massive setback
of the Russian 'special military invasion' agenda.
The
west bank of the Dnipro River represents Russia's sole foothold of the
area. That area where the Dnipro i\bisects Ukraine is a gateway to the
Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Energoatom, Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator, said it assumes ... the Russians to be preparing a terrorist
act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at [the
plant]. It said there were 174 containers at the plant's dry spent fuel
storage facility, each of them containing 24 assemblies of spent
nuclear fuel.
"Destruction of these containers as a result of explosion will lead to a
radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred
square kilometres of the adjacent territory."
People shelter inside a subway station during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on Tuesday. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)
"Kyiv is well aware that such a step would mean a guaranteed escalation to World War III."
"The suicidal nature of such a step [NATO welcoming Ukraine into its membership] is understood by NATO members themselves."
Alexander Venediktov, deputy secretary, Russian Security Council
"[In
the event of a Russian military use of nuclear weaponry]: We will not
go into exactly how we will respond, but of course this will
fundamentally change the nature of the conflict."
"It will mean that a very important line has been crossed."
"Even
any use of a smaller nuclear weapon will be a very serious thing,
fundamentally changing the nature of the war in Ukraine, and of course
that would have consequences."
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a Sept. 30 rally in Moscow's Red Square.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images
A
rational mind -- which under current circumstances making it clear that
it excludes Russian President Vladimir Putin -- would understand that
what Russia has embarked on, in a bid to swiftly and relatively without
much cost, restore Ukraine to the orbit of the Russian Federation,
integrating it geographically, reminiscent of the good old days of the
USSR's hegemonic stranglehold on Ukraine -- would understand that a
violent intrusion and annexation of its neighbour, and consequent
desperate threats of nuclear dimensions is itself suicidal.
Unfortunately,
the Kremlin sees the issue through its own dark lens of history,
heritage and conquest, illuminating the greatness that is Russia.
Ukraine, on the other hand, thinks quite rationally. It sees itself in
the talons of a neighbour that plans to expunge its history, tradition
and culture. A neighbour that once saw fit to bring down upon Ukraine
the spectre of a managed famine that wiped out millions of people
through the starvation called the Holodomor.
Moscow
does not withhold its bellicose intentions, making it clear that
Ukraine has no right to exist as a proudly independent, fully autonomous
nation. And despite protests from those Russians most affected by the
war; mothers of sons conscripted to the conflict, oligarchs made persona
non grata, their assets abroad seized, and Russian Ukrainians along
with human-rights personnel --- the greater Russian public is fully
supportive of pounding Ukraine into the ground, and absconding with what
is left.
Until,
that is, more Russian troops die, over the official count of 20,000
dead and countless more wounded. Mr. Putin has called an end to the
call-up, stating his goal of an additional 300,000 conscripts for the
front lines has been accomplished. That would be the front line that
keeps wavering and being shunted back toward the Russian border as the
great, fearless, ill-trained Russian army panics under the
counteroffensive of the Ukrainian military advance and flees, leaving
its weapons behind.
President
Volodymyr Zeleskyy announced an emergency bid for fast-tracking
membership into NATO immediately his Russian counterpart announced the
formal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces accounting for 18 percent
of its vast territory. Mr. Putin identifies his misfortune in the
campaign-gone-awry to U.S. meddling and, its encouragement of Ukraine to
counter the Russian invasion, providing a massive amount of highly
technical military equipment for good measure to Ukraine's advantage.
A
cornered Vladimir Putin snarls a reminder now and again that he
possesses a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and his nuclear division
has been placed on 'alert'. These may be desperate threats, but they are
not empty ones. Now that the industrial heartland of Ukraine is
purportedly in Russia's possession, any further forays by Ukrainian
troops into the four provinces to regain their possession, is to be
treated as an 'act of war' to be defended by any measures, including
nuclear.
Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched from the Sea of Okhotsk by a Russian nuclear submarine in 2020.Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
Which
implies that Russia's 'special military invasion' was no act of war,
but Ukraine's response certainly is, in Russia's regard. It is Ukraine's
intransigence in prolonging the war by denying Russia's claims of
history, heritage and possession, and therefore the deaths accruing from
the conflict as well as the destroyed infrastructure is Ukraine's
fault, fully and without equivocation. Russia is only doing what is
right; unseating a fascist government to free Ukrainians from servitude
to a neo-Nazi regime.
Russia
warns it would be justified in the use of nuclear devices, given the
West's and NATO's interference in its near abroad and the special
invasion of Ukraine. In fact, should the West consider the gift to
Ukraine of more powerful missiles that could conceivably wreak damage
over the border into Russia, nuclear arms could be pointed directly at
NATO-member assets in the region. Not an idle threat, Putin reiterates.
"We have a [nuclear] doctrine, which is clear."
"The dissuasion is working. But then, the less we talk about it the less we brandish the threat, the more credible we are.:"
"Too many people are talking about it."
French President Emmanuel Macron
France, stated President Macron in a television interview, would not respond with a nuclear strike.
Ukrainian
servicemen fire a mortar at their Russian counterparts on the front
line in Donetsk on Oct. 5. Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian territories
illegally annexed by Moscow, which has said its forces will defend the
areas as if they were Russian soil.ANTOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images
With All Due Respect ... Rational Judgement of an Irrational Tyrant?
"He [Kim Jong-un] tells me that he didn't know about it [charge, incarceration and torture of Otto Warmbier, U.S. citizen], and I will take him at his word." "I really believe something horrible happened to him [21-year-old U.S. tourist Otto Warmbier], and I really don't think the top leadership knew about it." "I don't believe he would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen." U.S. President Donald J. Trump
"We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out." "Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity." "No excuse or lavish praise can change that." Fred and Cindy Warmbier, parents
ITAR-TASS News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo
An American college student of 21, Otto Warmbier had been a tourist on an organized trip to North Korea. He was seen to have taken a poster, a North Korean propaganda piece that he meant to take back with him to the U.S. as a memento of his trip. Instead of boarding his flight back home, he was arrested in Pyongyang, accused of taking illegal possession of a poster. That possession earned the young man 17 excruciating months in a North Korean prison. His curiosity about North Korea was truly expunged, and he fervently wished nothing but to return home.
He was prepared to do anything and everything the regime demanded of him, from appearing on television to express guilt over his dreadful crime, to pleading with the authorities to allow him to leave. His humiliation, however, did not serve to satisfy the wretched ill feelings of North Korea nor its cretinous leader who determined that the young man hadn't quite suffered sufficiently to assuage indignation over his sense of entitlement that spurred him to make off with a poster.
When he eventually was permitted to leave North Korea to fly back to the United States, not even his anxious parents awaiting his return with the knowledge that their son was in very ill health resulting from his incarceration, interrogation and torture would or could begin to imagine how perilously on the edge of death he was. Immediately hospitalized, there was nothing that modern medical care could offer to prolong his life.
Otto signed a document with a thumbprint during his appearance at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang in March 2016.*KCNA KCNA
The Warmbier family succeeded in winning a $500-million judgement in federal court against North Korea. In December, a judge ruled the Kim regime to be responsible for the torture and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier. The money would mean nothing to them. They will never see any of it. It can be said to be recognized as a moral, but hollow victory. Nothing can restore their son to them, and the judgement means little other than what they know happened has consequences under the law, but there is no normal law in North Korea.
President Trump went to Singapore to meet with the nasty little dictator on an unrelated topic, one of huge interest and importance to the rest of the world, excluding champions of Kim, like Iran, Syria, Turkey, Russia and China. North Korea is a nation like few others. Small, impoverished, threatening and paranoiac, with a passion to perfect intercontinental ballistic missile systems and nuclear devices to go with them. Its population has undergone starvation and privation but for the elite who support their leader. Kim's devotion to seeing the world quail in despair over his threats feeds his ego.
Doug Mills, The New York Times
The U.S. President obviously feels he has the inside track with this nasty little dictator, and it's best not to dwell on speculations respecting their perceived commonalities in temperament and perhaps even character. What is clear, is that Mr. Trump appears to harbour some odd speculative affection for Kim, puzzling to any observer, perhaps explicable in his own mind. Even so, no harmony of like minds prevailed in Mr. Trump's insistence that Kim's nuclear ambitions be laid to rest in exchange for sanctions lifting.
And perhaps some measure of comfort can be taken in the fact that the U.S. President determined that no agreement could be reached in the face of that intransigence, though it's hard to see how he could have expected a different outcome, despite his stated confidence that he would return with a signed agreement, ostensibly because he sees himself as a master manipulator, a genius of 'the deal'.
However, that he could gull himself into believing that what happened to Otto Warmglier was not the full responsibility of and directed by Kim is astonishing.
North Korea is determined to prove its military might to the world. Picture: Liu Xingzhe/VCG/Getty Images
"[A] nuclear-to-nuclear showdown [is in the works that will] make the U.S. taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now." "North Korea rejects the] so-called Libya mode of nuclear abandonment, 'complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization', 'total decommissioning of nuclear weapons, missiles and bio-chemical weapons', etc. [and] 'abandoning nuclear weapons first, compensating afterward'." "[The Trump administration] is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nuke. But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not at all make such a deal in future, too." Pyongyang, North Korea "[Before the U.S. administration lifted its] maximum pressure [campaign, it expects the North to carry out complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization]." U.S. National Security adviser John Bolton
"The Clinton administration, even the Bush administration got played in the past. We offered concessions to the North Korean regime in exchange for promises to end their nuclear weapons program only to see them break those promises and abandon them." "[If Kim] doesn't make a deal [he will end like Gadhafi]." U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
seen on the front page of the Rodong Sinmun after a surprise second
meeting on May 26, 2018.
It's a stale, old ruse, which despite which its predictability in the end, continues to appeal to those wanting to believe that if only they place their trust in what they have seen lately, that the volatile juvenile delinquent whose rants and raves and muscular threats have been toned down, this time for good as Kim Jong-Un has finally and suddenly matured his vision with the realization that his country will continue to remain one viewed by its neighbours and the greater outside world as an economic failure and a new, conciliatory tactic was called for.
South Korea, anxious as always to appease the little monster, and hoping for an eventual outcome that will lead to reconciliation and reunification is prepared to set aside its skepticism and opt for placating and soothing Kim to convince him that no one and no force is interested in or prepared to challenge his administration. All that is required is for the North to renounce its nuclear plans and shelve its ballistics-improvement program and the world will be its oyster.
The South is interested in reunification but the North most certainly is not, since Kim has no intention of melding his Northern half with the South at the endangerment of his personal future and his firm dictatorship. It is worrisome to Kim that his family enterprise which has been appeased time and again on the pretense that all is well and whatever pacification demanded of it will be met with perfect compliance, has finally taught his adversaries caution and a view to more balanced reaction and restraint.
So that on trust alone the loosening of sanctions, the handing over of cash and kind will no longer be the norm in transactions between North Korea, the South and the United States. In past negotiations the benefits have been forthcoming before the North's promised stand-downs have come into effect, and they never did since in the short term their demands were met and no need was recognized to honour their end of the bargain.
The front-loaded economic benefits so sought-after by the North to enable it to benefit from 'sacrifices' it promises but will never agree to, are held back this time around. But despite the calm and relaxed atmosphere that Kim permitted to prevail in meetings with his South Korean counterpart, Ban-Ki Moon, and promises that his regime was prepared to completely denuclearize in lock-step with regional denuclearization, the proof of which was the destruction of the North's nuclear test site, the sham collapsed.
The Punggye-ri nuclear test site was already destroyed by the collapse of the mountain where the site had been anything but brilliantly located. As the Guardian newspaper reported: "North Korea's main nuclear test site has partially collapsed under the stress of multiple explosions, possibly rendering it unsafe for further testing", thanks to the earthquakes that resulted from those ill-placed nuclear tests impacting on the geological integrity of the mountain.
In response to the rudely pugnacious and insulting verbal assaults lobbed by North Korean authorities toward its American 'enemies' President Trump had decided to call off the scheduled June 12 meeting between himself and Kim. This was keenly wounding to Kim, wholly given over to the idea that he is influential and important enough to be seen (by him at least) as a co-equal to the president of the United States. Abusing Trump evidently wasn't supposed to result in his deciding to call off the meeting.
But this was the recommendation, in all likelihood by Beijing in advice to Kim. China is in quite a tight spot; its relations with North Korea have undergone some changes under international and UN pressure, but it still underwrites the North to keep it from imploding, to ensure it remains as a buffer, a noxiously irritating one, against Western and obviously United States interests, interfering with China's heavy-handed aggressions in the region itself.
President Trump just about matches Kim Jong-Un for passionate volatility and insulting remarks, but he has the kind of authority, if not morality, that Kim lacks. Trump may be less than suave about his opinions and how he employs his power base, but Kim is a totalitarian tyrant, an oppressor of his people, a threat to world order, and a murderer. In a sense it's a pity that Trump is once again back-tracking on his decision to abort the meeting declaring it now tentatively back on.
The success seen in tightening sanctions both against North Korea and tightening repercussions against China's support for the North was having its desired impact. Kim's game-playing histrionics and expectations will never abate. That old adage of bullies deserving rough treatment as an educational tool is a reflection of reality.
Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in talk during a meeting at the northern side
of the Panmunjom in North Korea. It was their second face-to-face
meeting. CNN
"Today we saw Kim Jong Un's charm offensive in action." "He's exerting his influence and trying to grab the spotlight with a big smile. But behind that smile, he was wearing his game face." Duyeon Kim, visiting fellow, Korean Peninsula Future Forum, Seoul
"We will work to make sure that the agreement bears good results, by closely communicating to ensure that the failure to implement North-South agreements in the past will not be repeated." North Korean President Kim Jong Un
"This is a great start and should be cause for cautious optimism." "The public conversation should now shift from speculation on whether North Korea would consider denuclearization to how South Korea and the United States can advance this denuclearization pledge in concrete steps." Patrick McEachern, fellow, Wilson Center, Washington
"Yes, there are still questions about how to guarantee North Korea's security on the path to denuclearization." "But I'm surprised they would go this far at this early stage, that Kim Jong Un didn't save this for his meeting with Trump." John Delury, professor of international relations, Yonsei University, Seoul
The pair met for historic face-to-face talks in Panmunjom. Picture: Korea Broadcasting System via APSource:AP
Kim Jong Un, a brutal dictator who relishes roiling the international community, enjoys ordering the gruesome deaths of those he thinks conspire to unseat his rule, exults in his scientists and technology mastering the arcane art of mass destruction, enabling him to threaten his perceived enemies, is at this time in the history of the Korean Peninsula, being treated like a rock star. Breathless news reports extol his bold new moves in pacifying a region he has sent into atmospheric turmoil.
Gushing stories relating to breaking new diplomatic ground and hopes for a future free of violence and threats of doomsday scenarios all emanating from this volatile, juvenile delinquent describe him now in heroic terms, courageously seeking a new relationship with his South Korean counterparts, his generosity of spirit saving millions of lives by one fell swoop; that of forsaking his nuclear and ICBM state programs whose achievements have given him huge delight.
Is he pioneering a brave new horizon? Or have his familial predecessors been down this elusive road before? With the very same hopes and promises, linked to substantial bribes to sweeten the pot of follow-through. His statement spoke of implementing North-South agreements for pacification and normalization, but he places blame on their previous failures on the South and that the North must be vigilant to ensure no failure occurs this time around.
How hopeful does that sound for reconciliation and the capacity to resolve a problem of opposing ideologies, of brutal threats, violence and misery all emanating from the North toward a conciliatory South? The closure of the North's nuclear installations has already been mandated by nature in the collapse of the mountain whose stability has been nuclearized by the imprudent place of those facilities in an unstable region.
Kim's thirst for plaudits, his impulsive, childish nature of psychopathic bullying and his lack of any kind of empathy for the North Koreans whose lives he has impoverished, living a tormented and threatened existence of starvation and imprisonment all reflect his lack of conscience and demented, power-hungry grasp for recognition as a great and impressive ruler. His threats to the world order supported by China's need for the North to create a buffer zone, reflect his psychotic nature.
The hope that has been invested in the surface surrender by this erratic and dangerous man to the greater good of his natural beneficence winning the battle of his personality to emerge as someone with whom the free world and South Korea can depend upon to recognize his responsibility to his nation and the rest of the international community may be seen to be displaced. Yet, we can hope and many do.
The primary question is how long he will choose to mothball his ultimate aspirations? "South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. South and North Korea agreed to actively seek the support and co-operation of the international community for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula", read the Panmunjom Declaration.
Time will tell -- whether this is a new initiative and a turning point, or a tired replay.
"North Korea is expressing a commitment to a complete denuclearization. They are not presenting a condition that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of the American troops in South Korea." "North Korea is only talking about the end of a hostile policy against it and then a security guarantee for the country." President Moon Jae-in, South Korea
Images of CIA Director Mike Pompeo, left, and North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un on a South Korean news program on a video screen at the Seoul
train station on April 18, 2018. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
South Korea has never stopped dreaming of re-unification. Which is to say the administration of South Korea. Re-unification would mean for the people of the South that their adversarial position with the North would come to an end, the separation of families would be over. The fear of unstable and unsettling events leading to violence and danger would become an episode of the past.
Threats emanating from the volatile Kim Jong Un would be set aside as a nightmare that the Koreas will have awakened from.
Not that these yearning dreams haven't surfaced before in the certitude that finally the belligerence will be set aside because the Kim dynasty at one point or another in their fragile relationship with the South and the West, has promised to reform. Those promises based on bribery, the provision of oil, food, financial support. And all of them, one after another, dashed as the North reverted to type once the ransom had been paid. Will it be different this time?
Kim Jong Un has demonstrated all the thoughtful restraint of a four-year-old dabbling in mud and delighting in the outcome, deliberately oblivious to the consequences of his impetuous and juvenile antics in testing new ballistic missiles and setting off newer iterations of nuclear devices. He appears to find great pleasure in causing fearful consternation among his neighbours when missiles are targeted toward Japan, or threats of reaching the American Pacific coast are made with great relish to the fear engendered.
The 'hostile' policy that North Korea responds to is a situation that exists mostly in the mind of a neurotic, paranoid man who feels insufficiently 'respected' and looks to achieve that elusive state of respect by actions unbecoming a sane adult capable of understanding how his policies of fear-mongering impact on those within range of his missiles.
South
Korean soldiers stand guard in the border truce village of Panmunjom in
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas. On Wednesday, a
high-ranking South Korean presidential official said they are
considering renegotiating the peace agreement between North and South
Korea. (Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images)
"As a leader of a rogue state, he is a tough case to deal with." "He has the guts but also is very strong in details. He is ambitious and has a desire to win." Kim Sung-han, former vice-foreign minister, South Korea
"Either Kim Jong Un's New Year's resolution to be a nice guy is real or his smiles and soft messages for Seoul are a ploy for buying time and money to perfect his own nuclear posture review." Lee Sung-yoon, Korea expert, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
"We see him increasingly self-confident about what he is doing." "If we look at what has happened in the past couple months, it was Kim Jong Un who took the initiative in each key moment." Koh Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean studies, Dongguk University, Seoul
"He wanted to show his confidence and stability in his power." "But the economy is his last challenge in quieting the people's discontent and establishing his leadership, and he knows that he cannot improve the economy without improving ties with South Korea and the United States." Yang Moo-jin, professor, University of North Korean Studies, Seoul
Perhaps one of the classes young Kim took when he studied at a Swiss university was how to charm doubters, how to throw them off the scent of his proven character as an oppressor par excellence of his people -- a tyrant whose dedication to his own greatness as the supreme authority of a benighted nation, never hesitating to order the death of relatives, state officials or anyone he perceives as challenging any of his initiatives -- made him a master of deception.
How else analyze the fact that academics who study the North and are intimately familiar with its history and the implacable dynasty that has ruled it as an intransigent, threatening and hostile country skilled at exuding a fearful aura of snarling belligerence, still hold this psychopath in awe for the power he wields and his penchant for swatting away reactions from truly powerful state heads as mere nuisances, refusing to be intimidated by sanctions harming his economy. His answer to which has been the arrogant flaunting of ever more powerful offensive weapons.
Sending ballistic missiles in a trajectory over the Sea of Japan, boasting that his advanced-technology intercontinental ballistic missiles can reach Hawaii, and he has the miniaturized nuclear warheads to tip them with may reflect his narcissistic self confidence while failing to endear him to his neighbours who fail to appreciate that they are being threatened by an upstart malicious little brute with no interior constraints. Despite which the South, which stands to lose the most in any possible mutual war footing, seeks to ingratiate itself with Kim.
South Korea's aspiration to reunification is a dream that refuses to be snuffed out as one regime after another optimistically imagines that the North will one day agree to join the South, set aside its weapons of mass destruction and opt instead for the wealth that could be theirs following the capitalist model of South Korea and its robust trade resulting from putting its industrious technological expertise into consumer products the international community is eager to access.
North Korea has such a long running trick-and-treat relationship with its neighbours and in particular with the world's sheriff, the United States, each effort to convince its leaders-in-sequence to forego nuclear plans in favour of growing its economy with the help of richer states rewarding it for agreeing to set aside its belligerence and devote its industries to advancing its peacetime interests; first agreeing and then reneging, yet always rewarded with new initiatives where the same scenario plays out over and over again, accomplishing nothing.
The South Korean delegation that travelled to North Korea to dialogue with Kim Jong Un in the hopes of opening up a new era of mutual agreeableness found a smiling, benign Kim prepared to greet them and to palaver. Entranced by the transformation, the South Koreans see someone they can do 'business' with, someone presumably amenable to talks with the United States, ready to set aside the threatening demeanour that challenged the world community just a few short months ago, agog that this Kim is so different from the other Kim.
The negotiators from the South who were ushered into Pyongyang's Workers' Party headquarters to meet with Kim and speak amicably like one big happy family for four hours, were described as "reverential", as though the crimes which this man is known to have committed, from sinking a South Korean vessel with all aboard, to starving his people so he can fund his engineers' efforts at advancing the arms toys he is so fond of, to terrorizing his neighbours with his experimental missiles seems all forgotten.
As though they were in the august presence of a sage, a brilliant tactician, not a mind uncluttered with the irritating presence of principle and morals, consumed with self-aggrandizement and challenging the world to recognize his status as a world power, and they stand prepared to do just that. China must be of two minds; a trifle concerned, yet on the other hand, pleased enough with its little client state which it can use as a cudgel against the West when the mood strikes.
Fool Me Once ... Shame on You ... Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me
"They think they can deflate some o the growing American-led consensus for some kind of action against them by making nice with the South." "The North Koreans want to prick the bubble of a gathering international consensus led by the United States that if necessary, military action must be taken against North Korea." Rick Fisher, senior fellow, International Assessment and Strategy Center
"From the American point of view, past negotiations with North Korea have accomplished nothing. From the North Korean point of view, however, they have accomplished precisely what they were intended to." "They have bought North Korea the time and over a billion dollars in American aid from the Clinton and Bush administrations." "The sanctions are starting to bite, and Kim Jong Un is reaching out to the weakest link of the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korean alliances, which is South Korea." "The key to solving the North Korean dilemma will not be found in negotiations between North and South Korea, but in pressure by the U.S. on North Korea's sponsor, China. As long as Kim Jong Un is convinced that he enjoys China's quiet support, he has absolutely no reason to change his behaviour." Steven Mosher, president, Population Research Institute
"It will only create divisions within the international community and harm joint efforts to appropriately resolve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue [for China to attend an international summit on North Korea in Vancouver next week; setting back and not advance peace efforts]." Lu Kang, spokesman, Chinese foreign ministry
Getty Images Jack Keane warned Donald Trump must prepare for a nuclear “showdown” with North Korea
Two of the most important of North Korea's sponsors, both neighbours of considerable influence on North Korea and to the world body as members of the UN Security Council have opted to sit out the forthcoming meeting scheduled nest week in British Columbia meant to thoroughly identify and discuss all options available in neutralizing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile threats to the international community. "If both China and Russia are absent from the meeting, then the significance and the utility of the gathering will be greatly discounted", commented Wendell Jiang, an expert on Asian politics at the University of Alberta.
Clearly neither sees the utility of such a meeting. Clearly neither views any recommendations coming out of such a conference as being useful to either China or Russia. The suggestion has been made that with North Korea specifically targeting the United States with its boasts of having achieved the perfection of an International Ballistic Missile to be matched with a miniaturized nuclear warhead, it is the U.S. that is in North Korea sights. North Korea has, in a recent rapprochement with the South, assured it that the North has no interest in harming the South; its focus is entirely the United States.
A situation that suits China and Russia well indeed. The feint of the North pulling back and offering to discuss matters with the South to normalize relations is viewed by the intelligence community in the West as a temporary placation of South Korea's concerns, one meant to buy time for the North. It has, after all, in its rash announcements threatening the U.S. and giving ample demonstration that it is well on its way to achieving the technological advances it so avidly seeks, placed the U.S. on a war alert. And North Korea is not yet quite prepared to respond to that level of antagonistic conflict.
Opening a dialogue with the South, defusing the tension, assuring the South that the North has no ill intentions toward it, relieves the pressure of the South's concerns that North Korean artillery is capable of claiming millions of South Korean lives. Quite apart from the natural empathy that the South evinces toward its wayward cousins in the North, prepared to believe anything the North assures them of its intentions, actions to the contrary.
What the North gains by placating the South albeit temporarily is the time it needs to accomplish its aspirations to match missile and nuclear programs, so it has seen fit to tone down its provocations. Just as Japan and the U.S. prepare to continue a hard line to pressure the Kim regime to withdraw from its plainly demonstrated plan on 'defense' by mounting attacks on those it suspects plan to take steps to move the Kim regime from its current status, the South is mollified and stands back, happy to revert to optimism.
As for China and Russia, the alliance between China and North Korea is what keeps the North alive and determined to pursue its aspiration. China, though fairly nervous about North Korean intentions and what might conceivably occur in a worse-case scenario, still finds comfort in the thought that the U.S. will be distracted from China's own forays into conquest against its own neighbours with its territorial claims in the South China Sea. If American military resources are taken up in countering the North Korean threat, it reduces the perceived threat against China's aspirations.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
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