Nuclear Weapons as a bargaining tool is not an idea that is long for this world I’d say. Of course, being a nuclear power and having nuclear weapons seems to give a country a bit of national pride and perceived safety from attack and until that changes, and the rewards are taken away, countries will continue to pursue nukes. Nuclear Proliferation is a scary way to play the political card of impasse with the threat of unspeakable WMD and war.
It appears that a leaked UN report shows that North Korea is indeed trading ICBM technology with Iran, and most likely also nuclear weapon technology. This is not the first report talking about North Korea’s weapon technology exports previously it has been known that Myanmar had also gotten nuclear and missile information from them. Also, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Sudan.
Perhaps, you recall that a number of years ago Iran agreed to purchase of 100 ($500 million deal) to SCUD-B missiles. But now we are talking about ICBM technologies. Unfortunately, when you mix ICBM Tech with Nuclear Warheads, things get very serious quick.
There was a full story on all this in Al Jazeera TV, a 25-minute program video posted on May 16, 2011 titled “North Korea and Iran’s Missile Power – A Leaked UN Report Claims N. Korea and Iran are Exchanging Illicit Missile Technology, Using China as a Transit Hub,” which aired in the Middle East on May 15, 2011 – and whereas, you might say this is any revelation or new information.
But in this last report it cited speculation and allegations that China was used as a transit point, and remember China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Why is China involved? Perhaps, most likely energy, Iran has lots, China needs lots. See that problem as well?
It seems that if you look back the history of nuclear proliferation and trace the steps, of which countries had it, with whom they shared the technology, you see a rather troubling pattern, almost as if Moore’s Law is in place, and the number of nations gaining these weapons or technology is rapidly increasing. Just pull up an old RAND Think Tank position paper or old research study and you’ll see the reality here.
Right now as we speak, Iran is attempting to gain allies by sharing its nuclear weapons knowledge in its nuke programs. With Venezuela for instance, along with again Medium and perhaps long-range missile technologies as well, a double whammy which causes a huge amount of unrest in the world and keeps intelligence agencies up at night. So, I hope you will please consider all this.
achsan uddin