As Trump Defends Iran Nuclear Site Destruction, Kim Jong Un Takes Notes

Newsweek

25-06-2025

Based on factual reporting, incorporates the expertise of the journalist and may offer interpretations and conclusions.
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As the White House clashes with media over multiple reports purporting to indicate damage dealt by U.S.-dropped "bunker buster" bombs on heavily fortified Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend was not as extensive as advertised, analysts and former officials say North Korea is closely eyeing what the unprecedented operation may hold for its own nuclear fortresses.
The fallout comes at a symbolic time, as both Koreas on Wednesday observed the 75th anniversary of their devastating three-year war. And while President Donald Trump appears to have won a ceasefire putting an end to Iran and Israel's "12-Day War," peace continues to elude the Korean Peninsula, where North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has long counted Tehran as a partner.
In fact, some experts and foreign intelligence reports have long indicated a direct connection between Iran's sprawling underground enrichment facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz—three sites targeted by 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) carried by B-2 stealth bombers on Saturday—and North Korea's own subterranean nuclear network.
Among them is Bruce Bechtol, former intelligence officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and current professor at Angelo State University in Texas.
"The B-2 have to certainly give the North Koreans great pause," Bechtol told Newsweek. "And the reason I say that is because it looks like the B-2—at least for now—with those bunker buster weapons, can take out just about anything."
He argued that North Korean experts helped engineer Iran's nuclear infrastructure, "so why wouldn't you think their facilities are built the same way?"
"They're built great, and they thought they could withstand bunker buster bombs and all that other stuff. Well, not so fast, my friend," Bechtol said. "I think definitely the action just taken by the U.S. Air Force with those B-2 bombers has at the very least made the North Koreans have to sit back and take pause."
"And, at the very most," he added, "maybe they're going to start replanning for where they're going to have those facilities and how they're going to protect them."
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un observes as military units conducted combined tactical drills on May 13.
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un observes as military units conducted combined tactical drills on May 13.
Korean Central News Agency
Tehran-Pyongyang Parallels
While more concrete evidence has emerged of Iran and North Korea's collaboration on conventional military capabilities, the suspected ties between their nuclear infrastructure have never been independently verified.
Yet multiple sources, including a 2009 Congressional Research Service paper and 2006 Janes Defense Weekly report, indicated that a North Korean delegation led by expert Myong Lyu Do traveled to Iran in 2005 to help oversee construction of protected nuclear sites in partnership with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The project would have begun a year prior to North Korea, then led by Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, conducting its first nuclear weapons test. Iran, for its part, is not assessed to possess any nuclear weapons and continues to deny seeking them.
But there are other parallels between Tehran and Pyongyang's nuclear journey that may prompt worry for what lies ahead for North Korea, which has also tried its hand at winning Trump over with diplomacy.
Just as he scrapped the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, alongside Iran and other world powers, Trump pressed forward with a separate track of talks with Kim in 2018. That June, he became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean ruler and held two additional meetings before talks ultimately unraveled the following year.
The breakdown in negotiations was not accompanied by a return to open threats between Trump and Kim, as was the case more recently with the U.S. and Iran, a difference that could at least partially be attributed to the fact that North Korea was negotiating with an increasingly advanced nuclear arsenal.
"Although North Korea remains concerned about what it calls threats from the U.S. and its allies in the region, it almost certainly knows that its nuclear sites will not be bombed the way Iran's was, due to the fact that it has nuclear weapons whereas Iran does not, and because of the greater geopolitical risks of such bombings against North Korea," Rachel Minyoung Lee, former open source analyst for the U.S. government and now senior fellow for the Stimson Center's Korea Program and 38 North project, told Newsweek.
Still, she argued, "North Korea is probably drawing several lessons from the Israel-Iran armed conflict, and one of them probably is the urgency of improving its outdated air defense systems."
"Another takeaway for Kim is probably the need to continue strengthening its attack capability," she added, "including diversifying its means of attack and updating its operation plans."
As for diplomacy, Lee was skeptical as to whether Iran's experience would push North Korea to reopen channels with the Trump administration and felt the U.S. intervention would also reinforce Pyongyang's commitment to maintain some form of nuclear deterrent.
If Kim does come to the table, she argued, it would be on his own terms and likely take into account internal developments set to take place in coming months.
"North Korea will engage with the Trump administration when it is ready and wants to," Lee said. "This won't happen until after the Ninth Party Congress in January 2026. Until then, North Korea will focus on improving the economy and finishing the five-year defense development plan."
"For the remainder of the year, Pyongyang also will keep a close eye on how the Trump administration's North Korea policy shapes up, and how the administration's actions and words align with the new policy," she added. "It will assess all this and probably present a new foreign policy program at the Party Congress this coming January."
Assessing Alliances
In the meantime, Lee felt that North Korea "will remain committed to strengthening relations with Russia," with which Pyongyang signed a historic alliance last year that included a mutual defense treaty, paving the way for the deployment of North Korean troops to repelling a Ukrainian incursion onto Russian territory amid the ongoing war between the two nations.
Tehran, too, signed a strategic partnership with Moscow in January, but it notably omitted any commitments to mutual defense, leaving the Islamic Republic to rely only on its alliance of non-state actors known as the Axis of Resistance, who have been badly battered throughout a 20-month war with Israel.
Previously, North Korea had only one official ally, China. While both Beijing offered support to North Korea during its war launched against South Korea in 1950, it was the large-scale Chinese military intervention that helped repel a counteroffensive backed by the U.S. and a United Nations coalition, resulting in a stalemate and eventual ceasefire reached in 1953.
Having played both sides off of one another through the Sino-Soviet split, Pyongyang leaned more toward Beijing after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In more recent years, however, and especially since Kim took power in 2012, ties with Moscow have been on the upswing.
Joseph DeTrani, former CIA director of East Asia Operations, associate director of national intelligence and mission manager for North Korea—and now president of the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security—also suspected North Korea "will double down on its relationship with Russia" in the wake of the U.S. attacks on Iran.
Meanwhile, both Lee and DeTrani described North Korea's current relationship with China as "strained."
Yet DeTrani argued that Kim may also prove open to new dialogue with the U.S., particularly under Trump, who has concurrently sought better relations with Russia.
DeTrani has direct experience in diplomacy with North Korea. He represented Washington as special envoy at the Six-Party Talks held between China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and the U.S. in 2003, following Pyongyang's withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Now, he continues to appeal for renewed communication, particularly as he argued the alternative could provide Tehran incentive to invest in deeper alliances of its own, to include Pyongyang.
"In fact, reaching out to Kim Jong Un is something we should do, to remind Kim Jong Un not to provide Iran, if requested, with nuclear weapons or fissile material for a dirty bomb; that this is a stark red line that if North Korea crosses, the consequences would be intolerable," DeTrani told Newsweek.
"I say this because Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and they—or their proxies—may reach out to North Korea, to seek this type of assistance, for a price," he added. "And for North Korea, if the price is right, they may consider such an Iranian request."
North Korea has a history of backing armed groups in the Middle East. Throughout the Cold War, reports tied Pyongyang to military support to a variety of factions, including the Palestine Liberation Organization and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
North Korean arms have also been found in the hands of the Palestinian Hamas movement, including during its October 2023 assault that sparked the still-ongoing war in Gaza and served as the prelude to Iran and Israel's direct conflict. Other Iran-aligned factions involved in the broader conflagration such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Ansar Allah have also used North Korean weapons.
Still, even if North Korea considers boosting relations with Iran as the dust settles in the Middle East, the focus remains set on developing and protecting domestic capabilities, both conventional and nuclear.
"Given the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, Kim Jong Un most likely is concerned about the security of his Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium sites," DeTrani said. "In fact, it appears that a second uranium enrichment facility is being built at Yongbyon, in addition to the Kangson undeclared enrichment site."
And while he pointed out how North Korea's nuclear capabilities—which include the Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of reaching anywhere in the U.S.—he also noted how the nation's most elite units possess significant non-nuclear firepower that could inflict devastation against neighboring South Korea to degrees potentially several times that experienced by Israel during its war with Iran, sitting hundreds of miles away.
Seoul, on the other hand, lies just 35 miles from the Demilitarized Zone border established after the Korean War.
"In fact, North Korea's Special Forces, located in the Kaesong region near the DMZ, have formidable conventional capabilities," DeTrani said. "They can target Seoul quickly and inflict significant damage."
A B-2 Spirit is seen in this photo published March 28, 2013, alongside an announcement, not pictured, that the stealth bombers conducted a mission above the Korean Peninsula.
A B-2 Spirit is seen in this photo published March 28, 2013, alongside an announcement, not pictured, that the stealth bombers conducted a mission above the Korean Peninsula.
United States Forces Korea
Lessons Learned
Ultimately, much of how North Korea gauges its reaction may rely on the assessments that emerge from the devastation inflicted on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.
Trump asserted that the sites had been subject to "monumental damage," even "obliterated," while intelligence assessments cited by CNN, The New York Times and several other outlets fell short of portraying severe and lasting damage on Iran's nuclear program.
"This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as 'top secret' but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in response to the outlet's reporting.
"The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program," Leavitt added. "Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration."
Amid the U.S. debate, Kim is likely moving to draw his own conclusions, according to Jong Eun Lee, former South Korean Air Force intelligence officer who now serves as an assistant professor at North Greenville University.
"My first thought is that Kim Jong Un will closely review the extent of damage caused by the U.S.' GBU-57 'bunker buster' on Iran's underground facilities," he told Newsweek. "As this is the first time U.S.' prized 'bunker buster' has been used operationally, it is an opportunity for North Korea to make a comparative assessment of the security of its underground facilities."
He also pointed out that, while the U.S. MOP is widely touted as unique in nature, South Korea actually possesses a similar weapon, the Hyunmoo-5. Pyongyang ridiculed the weapon as useless last year, but he argued that "North Korea might change its tone."
At the same time, Kim may have more to worry about than just his nuclear facilities. One of the most striking episodes to emerge from the "12-Day War" between Iran and Israel was Trump's open teasing of regime change operations and even posing the premise of killing Iran's own supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Trump's recent warning to Iran's leader that 'the US knows where you are' may be interpreted as a threat of assassination, a threat that Kim may also be concerned about," Jong Eun Lee said. "It's also worth noting that there are speculations that the number of North Korea's nuclear facilities may be located close to the capital, Pyongyang."
But as the battle results are calculated among officials in Pyongyang, Tehran, Washington and elsewhere, there's another possibility that Jong Eun Lee proposes, and that's: "Did Iran really 'lose'?"
"I know Trump just declared a ceasefire has been achieved, but did Iran really make concessions to give up its nuclear programs?" he asked. "As we wait for more details on the ceasefire, North Korea would likely do the same as well."
"There's a chance," he added, "North Korea could ultimately be encouraged from Iran's experience that it could withstand better future U.S. military threats."