Missile Collaboration Between North Korea and Iran Goes Back Years

If North Korea is allowed to to launch it's missile this weekend it will be a green light for Iran to continue it's ballistic and nuclear program full steam ahead. CNS News

as long ago as the early 1990s, missile collaboration was underway. When North Korea in May 1993 tested its medium-range Nodong missile, Iranian experts attended, according to media reports at the time. Iran subsequently developed the Shahab-3, testing it in 1998 and 1991 with North Koreans this time reportedly observing.

Although then Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani insisted the Shahab-3 was “entirely” Iranian-made, scientists said the missile, whose range of at least 620 miles threatens Israel as well as U.S. forces in the Gulf, was based on the Nodong (as was Iran’s earlier Shahab-2 essentially the same as an earlier North Korean Scud missile, the Hwasong-6).

Unclassified CIA reports to Congress on the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and related technology have over a number of years noted a longstanding Iran-North Korea relationship in developing ballistic missile technology.

The reports identified North Korea as a key provider of missile technology, naming Iran as well as Syria, Pakistan and Libya, among its customers.

In Pakistan’s case, South Asian security analysts believe North Korea provided missile technology in return for nuclear know-how supplied by the black-market network run by A.Q. Khan. The exposure of the Khan proliferation activities in 2004 and Libya’s decision the previous year to shut down its WMD and missile programs deprived North Korea of customers – and major sources of hard currency.

By 2006, the CIA was reporting that Iran and Syria remained the countries of principal concern with regard to sales of North Korean missile technology.

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