The Iran nuclear deal does not prohibit Iran country from outsourcing its nuclear arms research to North Korea, which has vowed this week to produce more nuclear bomb fuel, experts are saying.
“We have to make sure that we’re doing whatever we can to uncover anything,” CIA Director John Brennan told reporters on Tuesday, reports
The Washington Times.
"I’m not saying that something is afoot at all — what I’m saying is that we need to be attuned to all of the potential pathways to acquiring different types of [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities.”
The deal will free between $100 billion to $150 billion in Iranian assets, which could be used to pay other rogue countries, like North Korea, to carry out the research operations that the agreement prohibits in Iran itself, said Michael Rubin, an analyst for the American Enterprise Institute.
"[Secretary of State John] Kerry and crew left a loophole a mile wide when they effectively allowed Iran to conduct all the illicit work it wants outside of Iran, in countries like North Korea or perhaps Sudan,” Rubin said.
Larry Niksch, a scholar for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in July that he believes North Korea may receive "upwards of $2 [billion] to $3 billion annually from Iran for the various forms of collaboration between them.”
But another expert, Jim Walsh, an associate with the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, disputed such claims.
“People who believe there has been nuclear cooperation rely almost exclusively on media accounts," Walsh said. "I reviewed some 76 media reports covering a span of 11 years. None of the 76 reports has been confirmed — none."
Brennan on Tuesday also dismissed questions that the two countries already have agreed on nuclear cooperation, but also stressed that the CIA is "not going to assume that's not going to happen," while saying the U.S.-led coalition's deal with Iran makes it difficult for Iran to cheat.
Meanwhile,
North Korea said last week it has once again started its nuclear reactor and has nuclear weapons. Further, the country reportedly is able to make a small warhead that fits on its medium-range missiles.
Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, said the collaboration between Iran and North Korea has been ongoing and there is "credible evidence" that the cooperation has enhanced nuclear efforts for both countries.
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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