The Times Online reports: Iranian technical experts were reported to be in North Korea helping the Dear Leader prepare for his missile launch. And doubtless to learn what they can about evading US anti-missile defense methods. Why do you suppose?
Missile experts from Iran are in North Korea to help Pyongyang prepare for its rocket launch, according to reports.
Amid increasing global concern over the rocket launch, believed by the US and its allies to be an illegal missile launch, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper claimed today a 15-strong delegation from Tehran has been in the country advising the North Koreans since the beginning of March.
The Iranian experts include senior officials with Iranian rocket and satellite producer Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, the daily said.
Meanwhile, the Korea Register reports that the Obama administration signed sanctions carried over from the Bush Administration.
According to the U.S. Federal Register, the Obama administration signed off on the new sanctions, a measure that was largely prepared by the previous George W. Bush administration. Washington says these specific foreign firms have been targeted for allegedly breaching U.S. trade laws against the proliferation of missiles and other armaments.
The North Korean firms targeted by the U.S. sanctions are Mokong Trading Corp., Korea Mining and Development Corp. and Sino-Ki, according to reports. Other foreign entities named in the measure include two Chinese companies, Bellamax and Dalian Sunny Industries, as well as two Iranian firms, Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group and Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group.
The measure would prohibit these companies from conducting business with American agencies and private companies. It is largely seen as a symbolic measure with no practical business consequences, however, as these firms most likely are not doing business with U.S. entities.
These are the first such measures approved under the Obama administration, which may suggest that the new U.S. government will continue to pursue the previous Bush administration’s tough approach on weapons proliferation.
The AP believes that North Korea will go through with its test, no matter what. ”
“It’s unthinkable” for North Korea to cancel its plan now, said Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute think tank outside Seoul. Paik said North Korea would not want to be seen as bowing to international pressure and would not want lose what it views as a good opportunity to bolster its leverage with President Barack Obama’s administration as it formulates its policy toward the North.
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25 Comments
1. Barry 0351:The American tiger without teeth that’s what the NorKs see when they look at Obama.
Mar 29, 2009 - 5:36 am 2. Barry 0351:The Iranians see a Gaza strip on our southern border to shoot quassam into us.
Mar 29, 2009 - 5:50 am 3. RWE:The Iranians were present for the last Taepodong launch. I had some discussions with a guy at Globalsecurity.org and he said that the USN had IDed an Iranian ship positioned under the rocket’s planned flight path and that Iran was thought to have made the nose fairing, which also appears to be what failed on that launch.
Added to the North Korean aid to the Syrian reactor, Syrian supply of solid rocket motor fuel components to North Korea, well, I wonder how many people are laughing at Pres Bush’s “Axis of Evil” epithet now.
Oops, I guess that will now be “Collection of nonaligned nations with curious but isolated associations with whom we have issues related to the conflict previously known as the War on Terror but which is now known as Obama’s Tea Party With Good Friends of Color.” One of y’all come up with an acronym for that to make it easier to write.
Mar 29, 2009 - 6:05 am 4. Gaffe Prices:wow there’s a real axis of evil out there, who knew?
Mar 29, 2009 - 7:41 am 5. Wadeusaf:Don’t the Japanese have some defensive capabilities they would like to test? Trajectory and mounts (add ons) mean lots of things to lots of people. I suppose it is easier to shoot down a bogey if you know its going to try to fly.
Mar 29, 2009 - 8:15 am 6. Lifeofthemind:RWE,
Mar 29, 2009 - 8:50 am 7. Stephen:I call it the Long War.
Bush pulled one punch when he didn’t make eliminating the fascist Ba’ath rump regime in Damascus part of the original “Axis of Evil” formulation.
We should be cutting steel right now, should have been 5 years ago really, to triple the size of the fleet.
You want a jobs program? That would be a jobs program.
“Don’t the Japanese have some defensive capabilities they would like to test?”
The challenge is to do whatever testing can be done without giving away anything useful to the bad guys. If it’s possible to sandbag them about our technology so much the better.
Mar 29, 2009 - 9:04 am 8. Mike Sylwester:The Islamic Republic of Iran has to learn its technology from the Super-Atheist Republic of North Korea. Everyone in North Korea who believes in God has been persecuted viciously for the past 60 years, but the atheist North Koreans themselves figured out how to make nuclear bombs and missiles. Moslem Iranians must go politely, hat in hand, to ask atheist Koreans to explain how to make and operate machines.
Desparately hoping that the atheist Koreans will provide such explanations, the Moslem Iranians must blatantly ignore the Koreans vicious persecutions of its citizens who believe in God. The Moslem Iranians humbly, meekly pretend not to notice that North Korea has many concentration camps full of people imprisoned for believing in God.
Mar 29, 2009 - 9:14 am 9. JFSanders:That is not so hard for Iran to do. Those imprisoned are not Muslim and therefor are not to be worried about. The end goal is the target for Islam. If millions of Muslims have to perish to reach that goal then that is their duty to Allah. PBUH. Once Islam has the technology of nuclear fire they will be able to rid the planet of Kafir and Islamic utopia will reign for all eternity. Yay…
Jim
Mar 29, 2009 - 9:38 am 10. slimslowslider:“The Iranians see a Gaza strip on our southern border to shoot quassam into us.”
I wonder what the response from our huge mexican population would be to us bombing back?
Mar 29, 2009 - 10:15 am 11. Jim in Virginia:If Qassam missiles start flyng north across the Rio Grande, they are much more likely to hit Americans of Hispanic origin than Anglo Saxons. The border counties are well over 90% Hispanic.
Mar 29, 2009 - 10:43 am 12. Sam in alabama:And being Tejanos most of them own guns, and will be mighty pissed if infants or old women are injured by Qassams.
There is a reason the immigrants and their children and grandchildren are in Texas or Califorina and not Oaxaca or Coahuila anymore. It isn’t just jobs, it’s quality of life. Something immigrants appreciate far more than native borns.
The problem with North Korea is the fact that the United States has put off any meaningful talks with them for the past 60 years now. After the Korean War came to a stale mate and no armistice was signed that should have been the first thing on the plate of any administration. The cold war rhetoric played out made this impossible. Now with a Communist North Korea that has proven that they can manufacture nuclear weapons it will be next to impossible to negotiate any reasonable settlement. I do not agree with Sanctions because 1.) How can you place sanctions against a nation for producing the same weapons that most major super powers have? 2.) North Korea already has WMD’s in the form of chemical and biological weapons. These weapons by themselves are much more of a threat than nuclear weapons in that they can be deployed easier, they can be placed not only on ballistic missiles but can be loaded on any aircraft with a good dispersal system, and they are harder to detect than simply waiting for a mushroom cloud to appear. 3) It is known from our experience after sept 11th that any scientist worth his weight can produce anthrax or any other bio weapon and deliver it simply using the postal service of any nation. North Korea has been emboldened by the fact that not even the United States wants to fight a conflict against North Korea that would pull a lot more troops into it more so than Iraq or Iran would. In the end the only way to convince North Korea of disbanding its weapons program would be to bring to an end the Korean War, and unify both North and South Korea in a way that would bring peace to the region. Religion has nothing to do with aspirations that North Korea has, nor does the current occupant of the white house have anything to do with what North Korea wants. Simply put North Korea will operate under the same assumption it has for decades and that is that most nations including the US does not and will not stomach a full scale conflict like the one in the 1950’s
Mar 29, 2009 - 2:32 pm 13. blert:The end state is a KFR ( Kim Family Regime ) collapse as a consequence of our current global economic war.
Merging KFR with any other entity is a total non-starter, gangsters absorb and liquidate — they don’t negotiate.
Mar 29, 2009 - 2:36 pm 14. TommyJohnson:If this adminstration want to deal with Iran
Mar 29, 2009 - 3:05 pm 15. Margo in VA:It must verify and not o9perate on blind trust. If that worked with President Ronald Reagan with the USSR it may for For President Obama with IRAN!
We shouldn’t be worried about N. Korea. They are merely part of the good cop/bad cop act for China, with them being naturally the bad cop. N. Korea is a “failed State” and gets 100 percent of its food from China. Any time they do anything, it is w/ China’s approval. China needs its little pit bull in N.Korea, in order to distract everyone from its military buildup in our hemisphere, which is a violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
Mar 29, 2009 - 3:34 pm 16. Bud:Whatever! Did anyone see the last American Idol?!
Mar 29, 2009 - 3:41 pm 17. blert:The poor harvests that are sure to come will pretty much ensure that KFR dissolves in an agony of blood.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that her own security forces are now co-opted by capitalism and corruption — a pretty recent event — and that is one key reason why KFR is blocking the import of US food aid. (Too much of which was getting shunted by his control.)
No, it’s going to be the four horsemen, okay, maybe just three…
But the KFR is going down.
It’s a reasonable bet that Iran, Russia and Venezuela also go under.
I find it hard to believe that Iran does not provoke open hostilities before summer is out. These arms transshipments via Sudan indicate that she is another client state for the mullahs and China, the master patron.
Mar 29, 2009 - 3:59 pm 18. blert:It remains to be seen if China can flesh out her anti-NATO [the SCO] in a world of crashing output.
She seems bound and determined to a multi-variate alliance of the food impoverished and backward lands in this world.
With a navy in absolutely no position to defend far distant economic assets China is still stuck in a vastly inferior strategic position.
I read positive economic news reports from China by interested parties. It’s mighty reassuring to get my ground truth from the Communist Party of China — they’d never manipulate statistics like the BLS does.
It’s not like China built a fifteen-year overhead supply of Class A office space in her major cities — my bad, she did.
It’s not like she’s hit the classic growth model wall like Japan or Korea — my bad, she did.
The First Economic World War is going to collapse a lot of nations. If H gets his way, that will include the USA.
All of the trailing members of the economic herd are toast. Britain looks done for — thank you Labor.
Mar 29, 2009 - 4:10 pm 19. Andy Welikala:As a born-again, Bible Believing, Fundy Christian I am not one bit surprised at the way our world is heading towards Armageddon. So far all prophecies in the Holy Bible have come true 100% accurately 100% of the time. What is yet to be fulfilled will surely and definitely come to pass. just wait and see…this year and the next year are extremely crucial.
Mar 29, 2009 - 4:26 pm 20. what is occupation:Why not shoot the plane full of Iranians down?
Talk peace while taking out their assets…
sounds like a plan..
Mar 29, 2009 - 6:17 pm 21. Thomas:If the U.S., the Western nations and Isreal can have neclear weapons, then why not other countries. It that being fair or what? Now almost most countries can produced this kind of neclear power either for peaceful use or military uses. Why is the American or the Isreal be so special and be exampted from being sanction by others. All countries have the right to have nuclear power for their own purpose.
Mar 29, 2009 - 8:19 pm 22. what is occupation:Dear Thomas…
Israel and the Western Nations that have Nuclear technology INVENTED it… Whereas Iran, Pakistan stole it…
Iran, threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth and seek WMD, personally? I hope that Iran seeks Nuclear weapons then Israel will have the RIGHT to WIPE Iran off the face of the Earth in self defense…
If you really think that “All Countries” have a right to seek nuclear power for their own purposes and those purposes are to destroy the West & Israel then your in for a rude awakening………….
If most of the world, who has signed the NPT, week nuclear power they can get it.. However Iran, North Korea & Syria all have violated international laws and have records of violence against innocents…
Now you may not like the West or Israel…
To which i must say…
tuff shit….
Mar 29, 2009 - 8:28 pm 23. wretchard:Right after the destructive power of nuclear weapons was discovered a political consensus that they were too dangerous to proliferate emerged. A form of international “gun control”, if you like, implied that only the major powers (at the time of the end of the Second World War) could have the monopoly on nuclear violence, in a way analogous to the belief among many that only the police, or at least the uniformed army, should be allowed to carry weapons.
However, that consensus has been eroded by the aspirations of countries which want to use nuclear weapons for their own purposes. Slowly but surely the nuclear genie has been oozing out of the bottle. Pretty soon, perhaps inevitably, the world “Thomas” yearns for will come into existence. It is well known that once Iran gets the bomb, the Saudis will arm, with Egypt and Syria in close succession. Clearly if North Korea gets the bomb, then Japan and South Korea will very rapidly follow suit, and there will be pressure on Australia to follow. Again, to use the example of civil society, once gangs have armed themselves, then homeowners will acquire shotguns, automatic rifles, etc out of the need for self-preservation.
In many homes in Basilan, for example, there is an automatic rifle to hand. You would be a fool not to have one in such a lawless place. Father Nacorda, a Catholic priest in Basilan, goes about tending his flock with a .45 in his waistband. Maybe universal armament will produce its own stability, of the kind that you find in tribal areas, where only the mad dog and the European pacifist goes out unarmed in the mid-day sun.
When the world “Thomas” yearns for comes, he may not like it. But then it will be too late.
Mar 29, 2009 - 8:39 pm 24. Dave:About North Korea: Go sink the Pueblo.
It is their symbol of invulnerability. Sink it without warning or explanation.
The KFR will soon be Gone With The Kimchi.
Mar 29, 2009 - 9:02 pm 25. Taunter:The test works both ways – we/Japan get to take a swing at it as well, under conditions where it is difficult to say exactly who did what. If an interceptor misses, was it the US or Japan who fired, if both deny it? If an Iranian surveillance ship sinks, who sank it?
More here: http://tauntermedia.com/2009/03/29/quite-wily-like-his-old-man/
North Korea announced the test to flex its muscle. That benefit has already been received. Now they are the ones under pressure to deliver, while the rest of the world gets to sit back and take a good look at what they have.
Kim obviously feels that he needs a credible threat to strike the US. Challenge is, once he has it, we have very little to talk about; he can’t give it up, and we can’t do much while he has it.
As for poster #22, for what it’s worth, the atomic bomb was only “invented” once, by the US. All other nations who have it got it by acquiring the American design:
Mar 29, 2009 - 9:12 pmhttp://tauntermedia.com/2008/12/09/the-bomb/
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