North Korea Must Accept Totally Irreversible, Verifiable No Nukes

Mike Pompeo is off on his third trip to Pyongyang aimed at advancing the denuclearization of North Korea. The Secretary of State must contend with two competing realities.

First, Kim Jong-un’s regime is continuing nuclear weapons-related activities, notwithstanding the commitment to denuclearization he ostensibly expressed to President Trump in Singapore. That’s evident from photographs of above-ground facilities and must be assumed to be true at deeply buried, covert ones, as well.

Second, officials in South Korea are urging the Trump administration to back away from its insistence that nothing less than Kim’s complete, irreversible and verifiable denuclearization will be acceptable. They are leaking that the U.S. has actually agreed.

Given North Korea’s past, unbroken record of cheating, the fact that it is already violating the spirit of Kim’s undertakings means that complete, irreversible and verifiable denuclearization is the only acceptable outcome.

Frank Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a columnist for The Washington Times, and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio. Read more reports from Frank Gaffney, Jr. — Click Here Now.