Tag Archives: Nuclear Weapons

U.S. weighs making Hawaii missile test site operational

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military has stepped up discussions on converting its Aegis missile defense test site in Hawaii into a combat-ready facility that would bolster American defenses against ballistic missile attacks, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

The proposal, which has been discussed sporadically for several years, was given fresh impetus by North Korea’s fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and by recent strides in China’s missile technology capabilities, said current and former U.S. military officials, congressional aides and other sources.

A Chinese official in Washington suggested that Beijing would see such a U.S. move as counter-productive to relations.

Aegis, developed by Lockheed Martin Corp for use on U.S. Navy destroyers, is among the most advanced U.S. missile defense systems, integrating radars, software, displays, weapons launchers and missiles.

Setting up its land version — Aegis Ashore — in Hawaii and linking it with Aegis destroyers would add a permanent missile defense site to the Pacific, providing an extra layer of protection for the U.S. islands and the West Coast at a time when North Korea is improving its missile capabilities.

Ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California provide the current defense for Hawaii and the continental United States against missile attacks.

The Navy also relies on deploying Aegis-equipped destroyers based on U.S. intelligence warnings about imminent threats. North Korea’s development of mobile missile launchers has made it more difficult to predict launches in advance.

To make the test site combat-ready, the U.S. military would need to add personnel, stockpile live missiles and beef up security, at an estimated cost of around $41 million, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

It would also need to integrate the site into the larger U.S. ballistic missile defense system, with control likely shifting from the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency to the U.S. Navy, the sources said.

U.S. Navy Admiral Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, has been engaged in high-level discussions about ways to protect Hawaii, Guam and the continental United States from threats like North Korea, his spokesman, Captain Darryn James told Reuters.

James said no decisions had been made, but the Aegis Ashore site in Hawaii had a “proven test capability.”

“Admiral Harris is always exploring options to forward deploy and operationalize the latest advancements in ballistic missile defense technologies in the Pacific, where we face increasingly sophisticated threats to the homeland,” James said.

It remains unclear when the U.S. administration could reach a decision, but implementing the changes could be done swiftly, the sources said.

STRENGTHENING THE SHIELD

North Korea’s nuclear test in January underscored U.S. concerns that the secretive state has the ability to place a bomb on a long-range ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. West Coast.

Any moves to boost missile defenses could inflame growing military rivalry between China and Washington and its allies.

Converting the site on Hawaii’s Kauai island into combat use could rankle China at a time of heightened tensions with Washington over the disputed South China Sea. Beijing has already expressed concern about the possible deployment of the mobile U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea.

Zhu Haiquan, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Beijing believed the nuclear proliferation issue would be best resolved diplomatically.

“All measures seeking to increase military capacities will only intensify antagonism and will not help to solve the problem,” he said when asked about the possible U.S. move.

“China hopes the relevant country will proceed on the basis of regional peace and stability, adopt a responsible attitude and act prudently in regard to the anti-missile issue.”

Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly objected to the U.S. Aegis Ashore site in Romania, which is due to become operational in the coming weeks. A similar site is due to open in Poland in 2018.

The Missile Defense Agency explored the prospect of putting the Hawaii test site into full operation in a classified report to Congress in September 2014, according to one of the sources.

Congress requires the agency to update its estimate of the cost, feasibility and effectiveness of adding more Aegis Ashore sites this spring.

The Aegis Ashore test site in Hawaii completed its first intercept test in December, using a Raytheon Co Standard Missile-3 Block 1B to destroy a target that replicated an Iranian Ghadr-110 medium-range missile.

Riki Ellison, who heads the non-profit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said the new Aegis installation would in effect give the U.S. military three chances to shoot down a missile aimed at Hawaii, up from one currently.

“If you have the assets on the island, why not use them to protect against possible missile attacks from North Korea?” Ellison said.

The December test proved the Aegis Ashore system could fire two different Raytheon Co missiles — one inside the earth’s atmosphere and one outside — at an enemy missile.

Expansion of military operations in Hawaii have sparked protests by residents in the past.

But Hawaii Representative Mark Takai, a Democrat and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the conversion is “the best way to ensure we have protection for Hawaii’s critical defense infrastructure against increasingly belligerent actors that threaten our country.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Iran’s supreme leader welcomes sanctions lift, warns of U.S. ‘deceit’

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday welcomed the lifting of international sanctions against Iran, but warned that Tehran should remain wary of its old enemy the United States.

State television reported that Khamenei wrote to President Hassan Rouhani to congratulate him on implementing the nuclear deal, which resulted in U.S., European Union and United Nations sanctions being lifted over the weekend.

In his first comments since the deal took effect, Iran’s highest authority made clear that Washington should still be treated with suspicion. He made no mention of a surprise prisoner exchange that also took place this weekend.

“I reiterate the need to be vigilant about the deceit and treachery of arrogant countries, especially the United States, in this (nuclear) issue and other issues,” Khamenei said.

“Be careful that the other side fully meets its commitments. The comments made by some American politicians in last two, three days are suspicious,” he added.

Republican candidates for the U.S. presidency have criticized the deal, and some Iranian officials fear Washington could walk away from the deal when President Barack Obama leaves office in early 2017.

Hopes for a broader rapprochement between the two countries were dashed on Sunday when Washington slapped new sanctions on companies accused of supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program, drawing an angry response from Iranian officials.

(Reporting by Sam Wilkin and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

North Korea says peace treaty, halt to exercises would end nuclear tests

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea on Saturday called for the conclusion of a peace treaty with the United States and a halt to U.S. military exercises with South Korea to end its nuclear tests.

The isolated state has long sought a peace treaty with the United States, as well as an end to the exercises by South Korea and the United States, which has about 28,500 troops based in South Korea.

“Still valid are all proposals for preserving peace and stability on the peninsula and in Northeast Asia including the ones for ceasing our nuclear test and the conclusion of a peace treaty in return for U.S. halt to joint military exercises,” North Korea’s official KCNA news agency cited a spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry as saying early on Saturday.

Asked if the United States would consider a halt to joint exercises, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said it had alliance commitments to South Korea.

“We are going to continue to make sure the alliance is ready in all respects to act in defense of the South Korean people and the security of the peninsula,” he told a regular news briefing.

Asked earlier this week about North Korea’s call for a peace treaty, the State Department reiterated its position that it remained open to dialogue with North Korea but said “the onus is on North Korea to take meaningful actions toward denuclearization and refrain from provocations.”

The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

North Korea said on Jan. 6 it had tested a hydrogen bomb, provoking condemnation from its neighbors and the United States.

Experts have expressed doubt that the North’s fourth nuclear test was of a hydrogen bomb, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of a less powerful atomic bomb, in 2013.

Pyongyang is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs.

(Reporting by Tony Munroe in Seoul; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington, editing by Andrew Roche and Tom Brown)

Iran says it removes Arak reactor core in key nuclear deal step

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has removed the sensitive core of its Arak nuclear reactor and U.N. inspectors will visit the site on Thursday to verify the move crucial to the implementation of Tehran’s atomic agreement with major powers, state television said on Thursday.

Removal of the core from the Arak reactor will largely eliminate its ability to yield nuclear bomb-grade plutonium, and was one of the toughest issues to resolve in the long nuclear negotiations with the six powers.

“The core vessel of the Arak reactor has been removed … and IAEA inspectors will visit the site to verify it and report it to the IAEA … We are ready for the implementation day of the deal,” spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Behrouz Kamalvandi said.

Kamalvandi said “Implementation Day,” when Iran will start to get relief from international sanctions in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program under the July 2015 agreement, would come “very soon.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby concurred, saying “I do think we’re very close” to Implementation Day.

Kirby also confirmed that concrete had been poured into the core of the reactor. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday his Iranian counterpart had told him the core had been removed and would be filled with concrete and destroyed.

Under the deal, international sanctions against Iran will be lifted once the IAEA confirms Iran has met its nuclear commitments. Iranian officials expect the IAEA report on this to be issued on Friday. The Vienna-based U.N. watchdog has so far declined to comment on the report.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union’s Federica Mogherini will issue a statement on Saturday or Sunday on the “Implementation Day” of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions, according to Iranian officials.

The U.S. and EU sanctions have choked off nearly 1.5 million barrels per day of Iranian oil exports since early 2012, reducing its oil exports by 60 percent to around 1 million barrels a day.

Tehran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites within the last few months, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia.

“The core’s holes will be filled with concrete … The core was initially supposed to be cut into parts but we did not accept it as we want to keep it as the symbol of Iran’s nuclear industry,” Kamalvandi told state TV.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Doina Chiacu in Washington, writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry)

Analysis shows North Korea faked sub-launched missile test footage

SEOUL (Reuters) – Footage of a North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test released by Pyongyang two days after it announced it had conducted the country’s fourth nuclear test last week was faked, according to an analysis by a California-based think tank.

In defiance of a UN ban, the isolated country has said it has ballistic missile technology which would allow it to launch a nuclear warhead from a submarine, although experts and analysis of North Korean state media cast doubt on the claim.

North Korean state television aired footage on Friday of the latest test, said to have taken place in December. Unlike a previous SLBM test in May, it had not been announced at the time.

“The rocket ejected, began to light, and then failed catastrophically,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the California-based Middlebury Institute’s James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

South Korea’s military said on Saturday North Korea appeared to have modified the video and edited it with Scud missile footage from 2014 although an official told Reuters that the ejection technology might have improved since the May test.

The CNS analysis shows two frames of video from state media where flames engulf the missile and small parts of its body break away.

“North Korea used heavy video editing to cover over this fact,” Hanham said in an email.

“They used different camera angles and editing to make it appear that the launch was several continuous launches, but played side by side you can see that it is the same event”.

North Korean propagandists used rudimentary editing techniques to crop and flip old video footage of an earlier SLBM test and Scud missile launch, the video analysis showed.

The North’s claim that its fourth and most recent nuclear test, conducted last Wednesday, was of a more advanced and powerful hydrogen bomb has drawn skepticism from the U.S. government and experts.

It is also unclear if North Korea has developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a missile.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park and Hyunyoung Yi; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

U.S. flies B-52 over South Korea after North’s nuclear test

SEOUL (Reuters) – The United States deployed a B-52 bomber on a low-level flight over its ally South Korea on Sunday, a show of force following North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un maintained that Wednesday’s test was of a hydrogen bomb and said it was a self-defensive step against a U.S. threat of nuclear war.

North Korea’s fourth nuclear test angered both China, its main ally, and the United States, although the U.S. government and weapons experts doubt the North’s claim that the device was a hydrogen bomb.

The massive B-52, based in Guam and capable of carrying nuclear weapons, could be seen in a low flight over Osan Air Base at around noon. It was flanked by two fighter planes, a U.S. F-16 and a South Korean F-15, before returning to Guam, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Osan is south of Seoul and 48 miles from the Demilitarised Zone that separates the two Koreas. The flight was “in response to recent provocative action by North Korea”, the U.S. military said.

In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said on Sunday the flight underscored to South Korea “the deep and enduring alliance that we have with them.”

“Last night was a step toward reassurance in that regard and that was important,” McDonough said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He said the United States would continue to work with China and Russia, as well as allies Japan and South Korea, to isolate the North until it lives up to its commitments to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

“Until they do it they’ll remain where they are, which is an outcast unable to provide for their own people,” McDonough said.

China has publicly supported a denuclearised Korean Peninsula, and the United States will “make sure that they understand that a nuclear North Korea is not a stable scenario,” he said.

After the North’s last test, in 2013, the United States sent a pair of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers over South Korea. At the time, the North responded by threatening a nuclear attack on the United States.

The United States is also considering sending a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to waters off the Korean peninsula next month to join a naval exercise with Seoul, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported without identifying a source. However, U.S. Forces Korea officials said they had no knowledge of the plan.

The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and the United States has about 28,500 troops based in South Korea.

An editorial in the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Sunday called for a peace treaty with the United States, which is the North’s long-standing position. “Only when a peace treaty is concluded between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S. can genuine peace settle in the Korean Peninsula,” state news agency KCNA quoted it as saying.

The United States and China have both dangled the prospect of better relations, including the lifting of sanctions, if North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons.

Earlier on Sunday, KCNA quoted Kim as saying no one had the right to criticize the North’s nuclear tests.

“The DPRK’s H-bomb test … is a self-defensive step for reliably defending the peace on the Korean Peninsula and the regional security from the danger of nuclear war caused by the U.S.-led imperialists,” it quoted Kim as saying.

The North’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It is the legitimate right of a sovereign state and a fair action that nobody can criticize,” he said.

TIMING OF TEST

Kim’s comments were in line with the North’s official rhetoric blaming the United States for deploying nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula to justify its nuclear program but were the first by its leader since Wednesday’s blast.

The United States has said it has no nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea.

Kim noted the test was being held ahead of a rare congress of its ruling Workers’ Party later this year, “which will be a historic turning point in accomplishing the revolutionary cause of Juche,” according to KCNA.

Juche is the North’s home-grown state ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism established by the state founder and the current leader’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

KCNA said Kim made the comments on a visit to the country’s Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces.

South Korea continued to conduct high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the border into the North on Sunday.

The broadcasts, which include “K-pop” music and statements critical of the Kim government, began on Friday and are considered an insult by Pyongyang. A top North Korean official told a rally on Friday that the broadcasts had pushed the rival Koreas to the “brink of war.”

Daily life was mostly as normal on the South Korean side of the border on Sunday. A popular ice fishing festival near the border attracted an estimated 121,300 people on Saturday and 100,000 on Sunday, Yonhap reported.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson, Jee Heun Kahng, Ju-min Park and Do-gyun Kim and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Raissa Kasolowsky and Peter Cooney)

North Korea overcomes poverty, sanctions with cut-price nukes

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea has developed a nuclear weapons program despite poverty and international sanctions, using home-grown technology and virtually free labor to cut costs, experts said.

South Korean government analysis has put North Korea’s nuclear spending at $1.1 billion to $3.2 billion overall, although experts say it is impossible to make an accurate calculation given the secrecy surrounding the program, and estimates vary widely.

However, the weapons that North Korea has tested thus far are comparatively small and based mostly on less sophisticated fission, or atomic bomb, technology.

The isolated North’s claim that its fourth and most recent test, conducted last week, was of a more advanced and powerful hydrogen bomb has been widely doubted, although experts said it is possible Pyongyang took the intermediate step of boosting an atomic bomb with hydrogen isotopes.

A former South Korean official involved in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea told Reuters previously that it was likely the North’s nuclear program was cutting corners on safety, further driving down costs.

North Korea was at the bottom of a 2011 list on nuclear arms spending by Global Zero, a group campaigning to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

The full cost of Pyongyang’s program that year was estimated by the group at $700 million, making it the lowest spender among nuclear states, beneath Pakistan’s estimated $2.2 billion, although the analysis was made before the North’s two most recent nuclear tests.

By comparison, the United States spent $61.3 billion on nuclear weapons in 2011, according to the report.

Construction of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, North Korea’s main nuclear facility, cost $600-700 million, based on a 2012 estimate, a South Korean defense ministry official told Reuters.

The small reactor at Yongbyon, which began construction in 1979, is based on Soviet-era technology and generates just 5 megawatts of power.

“Actually, what they spend isn’t that much,” Kim Min-gyu, a former North Korean diplomat who worked at the North Korean embassy in Moscow until defecting in 2009, told Reuters.

“Their workforce works for free and, except for a few key imported parts, they make everything else”.

TAX THE RICH

Paying for those parts is not easy for a country whose official economy was worth just $28.4 billion in 2014, according to South Korea’s central bank.

But it has turned to a variety of sources for hard currency in the past, including counterfeiting, insurance scams, selling missile parts to the Middle East, and, more recently, exporting manpower abroad under conditions that human rights groups say resemble indentured servitude.

North Korea also boasts a booming unofficial market economy, driven by private trade that has flourished since the devastating famine of the 1990s, giving the state a relatively new source of foreign currency.

That gray economy has eclipsed the official one, experts said, and generates so much wealth that, after previous nuclear tests, wealthy traders known as “donju”, or “masters of money”, were arbitrarily and suddenly taxed by the state to pay for the nuclear program, according to one report.

“After the first three nuclear tests, prominent donju were purged on ‘anti-socialist’ charges and their assets confiscated by the state,” a source inside North Korea told the Daily NK, a Seoul-based website staffed by defectors still in touch with contacts inside North Korea.

In addition, North Korea exported more than $1 billion in minerals last year, mostly coal, to China, its main trading partner, according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese export data.

Although heavily sanctioned, North Korea still sells small arms to buyers who turn to Pyongyang because of a lack of viable alternative supplies, according to a recent report by Andrea Berger at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.

It also raises $200-300 million a year sending laborers as far afield as Poland and Mongolia to earn cash, said the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul.

Kim Min-gyu, the former diplomat, said laborer salaries are usually used to prop up the Pyongyang economy, and not invested in the nuclear program.

“Since money is completely fungible, you can’t isolate the transactions that go to pay for bombs from those that pay for apartment buildings in Pyongyang,” said Christopher Green, a North Korea expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

(Additional reporting by Rebecca Jang, Hooyeon Kim and Jeeheun Kahng; Editing by Tony Munroe and Mike Collett-White)

Pressure grows on China to rein in North Korea; South launches propaganda barrage

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) – South Korea unleashed an ear-splitting propaganda barrage across its border with North Korea on Friday in retaliation for its nuclear test, while the United States called on China to end “business as usual” with its ally.

The broadcasts, in rolling bursts from walls of loudspeakers at 11 locations along the heavily militarized border, blared rhetoric critical of the Pyongyang regime as well as “K-pop” music. North Korea later responded with its own broadcasts.

Wednesday’s nuclear test angered both the United States and China, which was not given prior notice, although the U.S. government and weapons experts doubt Pyongyang’s claim that the device it set off was a hydrogen bomb.

China is North Korea’s main economic and diplomatic backer, although relations between the Cold War allies have cooled in recent years.

China’s Foreign Ministry urged North Korea to stick to its denuclearization pledges and avoid action that would make the situation worse, but also said China did not hold the key to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.

“Achieving denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and safeguarding the peninsula’s peace and stability accords with all parties’ mutual interests, is the responsibility of all parties, and requires all parties to put forth efforts,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news briefing.

The North agreed to end its nuclear program in international negotiations in 2005 but later walked away from the deal.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday that he had told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that China’s approach to North Korea had not succeeded.

“APPROACH HAS NOT WORKED”

“China had a particular approach that it wanted to make, that we agreed and respected to give them space to implement that,” Kerry told reporters after the phone call. “Today, in my conversation with the Chinese, I made it very clear that has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual.”

In a call on Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, Wang said talks on the issue should be resumed as soon as possible, China’s Foreign Ministry said.

South Korea’s nuclear safety agency said it had found a minuscule amount of xenon gas in a sample from off its east coast but said more analysis and samples were needed to determine if it came from a nuclear test.

The head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which uses monitoring stations around the world to detect atomic tests, said only “normal” levels of xenon had been detected, at a site in Japan.

“Xenon readings at 1st station downwind of #DPRK test site RN38 Takasaki #Japan at normal concentrations. Sampling continues,” the CTBTO’s executive secretary, Lassina Zerbo, said on Twitter on Friday evening.

The presence of xenon would not indicate whether the blast was from a hydrogen device or a simpler fission explosion.

Seismic waves created by the blast were almost identical to those generated in North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2013, Jeffrey Park, a seismologist at Yale University, wrote in a post on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website, adding to scepticism about the hydrogen bomb claim.

Meanwhile, South Korea resumed its frontier broadcasts, which the isolated North has in the past threatened to stop with military strikes.

The last time South Korea deployed the loudspeakers, in retaliation for a landmine blast in August that wounded two South Korean soldiers, it led to an exchange of artillery fire.

The sound can carry 10 km (6 miles) into North Korea during the day and more than twice that at night, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported.

BORDER PROPAGANDA

A male announcer could be heard from South Korea telling North Koreans that their leader Kim Jong Un and his wife wear clothes costing thousands of dollars. Another message said Kim’s promises to boost both the economy and the nuclear program were unrealistic.

The North’s broadcasts were not clearly audible from the South and appeared intended to drown out those from the South, Yonhap said, citing a South Korean official.

As North Korea boosted troop deployments in front-line units, the South vowed to retaliate against any attack on its equipment, raised its military readiness to the highest level near the loudspeakers, canceled tours of the Demilitarized Zone on the border, and also raised its cyberattack alert level.

In Washington, the North’s actions appeared to have forged rare unity in the House of Representatives between Republicans and Democrats on tightening sanctions against North Korea.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, told reporters that Democrats would support a North Korea bill likely to be brought for a vote by Republicans next week. A congressional source said it was expected as soon as Monday.

But it is unclear how more sanctions will deter North Korea, which has conducted four nuclear tests since 2006.

The United States and South Korea are limited in their military options. Washington sent a pair of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers over South Korea in a show of force after North Korea last tested a nuclear device in 2013.

North Korea responded then by threatening a nuclear strike on the United States.

A South Korean military official said Seoul and Washington had discussed the deployment of U.S. strategic weapons on the Korean peninsula, but declined to give details. Media said the assets could include B-2 and B-52 bombers, and a nuclear-powered submarine.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson, Se Young Lee, Christine Kim, Jee Heun Kahng, Ju-min Park and Jack Kim in SEOUL, Dagyum Ji in GIMPO, Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton, Doina Chiacu and Arshad Mohammed in WASHINGTON, Tim Kelly in YOKOSUKA and Francois Murphy in VIENNA; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Paul Tait and Kevin Liffey)

North Korean Leader Claims Nation is Ready to Detonate Hydrogen Bomb

The leader of North Korea is reportedly claiming the country now has the ability to detonate a powerful hydrogen bomb, though his comments immediately drew skepticism from experts.

The state-run KCNA news agency reported Thursday that Kim Jong-un made the announcement while at the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site, which is significant to the country’s arms history.

According to the KCNA report, Kim said North Korea had evolved into “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.” If true, it would be a landmark development.

Hydrogen bombs rely on a different nuclear reaction than atomic bombs and are known to be much more powerful. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that while Kim has publicly touted on numerous occasions that his country has atomic-bomb capabilities, this appeared to be the first time the leader publicly indicated that North Korea possessed a hydrogen bomb.

Still, experts took Kim’s claim with a grain of salt. The leader is known for making bold claims.

“It’s hard to regard North Korea as possessing an H-bomb. I think it seems to be developing it,” Lee Chun-geun, a research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, told Yonhap.

The BBC quoted John Nilsson-Wright, the head of the Asia Program at Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, as saying Kim’s comments appeared to be “an attention-grabbing effort to assert North Korean autonomy and his own political authority.”

Iran’s Khamenei conditionally approves nuclear deal with powers

ANKARA (Reuters) – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday approved the Iranian government’s nuclear deal with world powers but said Tehran should not give up core elements of its atomic program until allegations of past military dimensions had been settled.

In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, whose pragmatist approach opened the door to nuclear diplomacy with the West, Khamenei ordered the July 14 agreement to be implemented, subject to certain security conditions the Iranian parliament stipulated in a law passed last week.

Under the Vienna agreement, Iran is to curb sensitive parts of its nuclear program to help ensure it cannot be diverted into developing bombs, in exchange for a removal of sanctions that have isolated the Islamic Republic and hobbled its economy.

Khamenei’s green light was the last procedural hurdle to carrying out a deal that ended a decade-long stand-off which raised fears of a wider Middle East war.

But the Supreme Leader has ruled out any detente with the West beyond the nuclear deal, and he said Iran would stop implementing it if the six powers – the United States, Britain, France, Germany China and Russia – imposed any new sanctions.

“Any comments suggesting the sanctions structure will remain in place or (new) sanctions will be imposed, at any level and under any pretext, would be (considered by Iran) a violation of the deal,” Khamenei said in the letter published on his website.

He said implementation of the deal should be “tightly controlled and monitored” because of some “ambiguities” in it.

“Lack of tight control could bring significant damage for the present and the future of the country,” he said, while praising the efforts of Rouhani’s negotiating team.

POSSIBLE MILITARY ASPECTS

The United States and the European Union took formal legal steps on Sunday that will rescind sanctions once Iran meets certain conditions such as reducing the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, and its enriched-uranium stockpile.

Another condition will be a resolution of a U.N. nuclear watchdog inquiry into whether Iran conducted atom bomb research at a military complex in the past – “possible military dimensions (PMD)” to the program, as the agency terms it.

On that point, Khamenei said that until U.N. inspectors settled the PMD issue, Iran should delay sending its stockpile of enriched uranium abroad and reconfiguring a heavy water reactor to ensure it cannot make bomb-grade plutonium.

The International Atomic Energy Agency finished collecting samples from Iran’s Parchin military complex earlier this month and is expected to announce its conclusions on PMD by Dec. 15.

Iran has long denied covertly researching bombs and says its nuclear program has always been for civilian energy purposes.

“Any action regarding Arak (reactor) and dispatching uranium abroad … will take place after the PMD (possible military dimensions) file is closed,” Khamenei said in the letter.

Iran agreed with the powers to fill the Arak reactor’s core with concrete so that it could not yield plutonium, which along with highly enriched uranium constitutes the standard fuel for nuclear bombs.

Iran is also required to export more than 90 percent of its refined uranium stocks, keeping just 300 kg of the material enriched to 3.67 percent fissile purity – suitable for running civilian nuclear power plants – for 15 years.

Since the deal was struck, Khamenei, who holds together Iran’s multi-tiered, faction-ridden power structure, has ruled out normalizing relations with the United States, overriding Rouhani’s expressed wish to pursue further areas of cooperation.

In comments meant to reassure hardline acolytes particularly in the security services, Khamenei said U.S. President Barack Obama had sent him two letters pledging America had no intention of toppling the Islamic Republic’s clerical establishment.

“But this was soon proved a lie … Neither on the nuclear issue nor in any other cases has America taken any position except hostility and trouble (towards Iran). Therefore any change in the future is unlikely,” Khamenei’s statement read.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Sam Wilkin; Editing by William Maclean and Mark Heinrich)