The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei (R) and Chairman of North Korea's Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong-NAM meet in Tehran on Saturday, September 1, 2012. Press TV (Iran)
Gordon G. Chang, Daily Beast: North Korean Nuke-Capable Missile Could Hit U.S. and Be Sold to Iran
The launch on Sunday is another sign of Pyongyang’s growing threat, and the impotence of U.S. and global efforts to stop it.
On Sunday, North Korea completed its second-in-a-row successful test of a three-stage launcher, showing the regime’s mastery of an especially complex technology.
Pyongyang claims it put an earth observation satellite — the Kwangmyongsong-4 — in a polar orbit. More likely, the object now circling the earth is a decoy. In 2012, after the North’s last long-range test, it announced it had put a communications satellite in space. No signal, however, has ever been detected from the device.
That “satellite,” and the one launched this week, are about the same weight as a nuclear warhead, and that was the point of these elaborate exercises. North Korea has been putting dead objects in orbit so that it can test, in violation of four sets of UN Security Council resolutions, its ballistic missile technology under the guise of a civilian rocket program.
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WNU Editor: I do not see such a deal going down. Iran is more focused on establishing trade and oil deals to boost its own finances and policy objectives .... buying a nuclear capable rocket from the North Koreans and the blow-back that it would entail is probably on the bottom of their list (if it is even on the list).