North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un will draw a dangerous conclusion from the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran: Nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantor of regime survival.
Pyongyang has condemned the operation that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, calling the attacks shameless and an illegal act of aggression. President Donald Trump justified the war by arguing that Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon, an assertion Iran denies.
North Korea’s nuclear program is far more advanced than Iran’s. It has conducted multiple tests and is widely assessed to have assembled dozens of warheads. The Iran crisis will likely reinforce a belief that American administrations have form when it comes to targeting hostile autocrats who don’t have their own powerful arsenal as protection. Kim will recall the fate of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi. Commentaries in North Korea’s state media have argued that a nuclear deterrent is essential to avoid suffering the same destiny.
For years, Washington and Seoul have tried to get Kim to give up his nuclear weapons, using sanctions and international pressure. That strategy has failed. He has routinely rejected denuclearization talks, and continued to expand his nuclear program. Now he can argue the escalating war in the Middle East proves that pushing ahead with weapons development was rational, not reckless.
The sensible course may no longer be persuading Kim to stop expanding his arsenal. Instead, he’ll need to be convinced that using it would bring devastating consequences.
The ball is now in Washington and Seoul’s court, says Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If they don’t come up with any new ideas, Pyongyang will continue with its ambitious and irreversible modernization plans for both its nuclear and missile programs,” he told me.
Kim is in his strongest position in years. Closer cooperation between North Korea, Russia and China has blunted sanctions pressure and reduced the incentive for compromise. Moscow and Pyongyang have upgraded military ties with a 2024 pact that includes mutual defense commitments. And while China’s role is more nuanced, it still provides crucial economic and diplomatic assistance. This alignment was on display during Beijing’s military parade last September, when leaders of the three nations appeared side by side at Tiananmen Gate in a show of defiance against the US.
The nuclear arsenal isn’t just a bargaining chip – it’s Kim’s insurance policy. It protects the regime, the dynasty and the succession narrative he has begun to stage around his daughter Kim Ju Ae. When she made her first public appearance in November 2022, she stood before the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile. The symbolism was unmistakable: The next generation will inherit the weapons guaranteeing the dynasty’s survival.
The nation is now thought to possess up to 50 nuclear warheads and enough fissile material to produce roughly 40 more, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It has also continued to build and test intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland, and regularly threatens South Korea, which it views as a “hostile” entity.
The South, which remains technically at war with the North, isn’t standing by. While urging Pyongyang to resume dialogue, it has also expanded its military capabilities with advanced ballistic missiles and plans for nuclear-powered submarines. The US presence is central to its strategy – about 27,000 US troops are stationed there, backed by American defense systems such as Patriot batteries and THAAD. Washington, Seoul and Tokyo now share missile-warning data, intelligence and conduct increasingly integrated joint military exercises.
Diplomacy is still possible – but only on Kim’s terms. He’s hinted at the conditions he might be willing to accept for talks. At the first ruling party congress in five years in February, he laid out his vision for further weapons development, vowing to build even more powerful ones. But he also added that if the US “withdraws its hostile policy, there would be no reason for us not to pursue better relations.”
It’s time we accept the uncomfortable reality of a permanently nuclear-armed North Korea. Washington and Seoul should now shift toward a policy of stable coexistence – focusing on deterrence rather than denuclearization, while encouraging normal diplomatic relations with regular engagement.
This will require a measure of trust on both sides, and the ability to manage Kim’s penchant for changing his mind, as he has done in previous meetings with Trump. Any new framework would have to be resilient enough to withstand that volatility. A continued US military presence on the peninsula and the expansion of missile tracking capabilities with Japan, which also sits within North Korea’s range, could also help.
Kim’s lesson from the Iran strikes will be simple: Autocrats without nuclear weapons are sitting ducks, while states who develop them them have protection. That belief will only reinforce his paranoia, and his determination to expand his arsenal – making the Korean peninsula harder, not easier, to stabilize.
(Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
