WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration’s early efforts to resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are getting a chilly early response from Tehran. Though few expected a breakthrough in the first month of the new administration, Iran’s tough line suggests a difficult road ahead.

Having made several significant overtures to Iran in its first weeks in office, the administration’s outreach has been all but shunned by the Iranians. They had already rejected Biden’s opening gambit: a U.S. return to the deal from which President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 if Iran resumes full compliance with its obligations under the accord.

Iran is shaping up to be a major test of the Biden administration’s overall approach to foreign policy, which the president has said will realign itself with the kind of multilateral diplomacy that Trump shunned. Although there are other hot-button issues — Russia, China, and North Korea among them — Iran has a particular significance for Biden’s top national security aides. They include Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and special envoy for Iran Rob Malley, all of whom were intimately involved in crafting the 2015 deal under President Barack Obama and may have personal stakes in salvaging it.

Biden took office pledging to reverse Trump’s pullout from the deal, which gave it billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Just last week, Biden delivered in at least three ways: agreeing to return to multinational talks with Iran about reviving the deal, rescinding Trump’s determination that all U.N. sanctions on Iran must be restored, and easing onerous travel restrictions on Iranian diplomats posted to the United Nations.

Yet, Iran has held firm to demands that it will not respond to anything less than a full lifting of the sanctions Trump reimposed. Over the weekend, Iran made good on a threat to suspend adherence to a U.N. agreement allowing intrusive inspections of its declared nuclear sites. Although it stopped short of ordering the removal of international inspectors, Iran reduced cooperation with them and vowed to revisit the step in three months if sanctions aren’t removed.

The Iranians’ hard-nosed stance has left the administration at the cusp of a difficult choice: move ahead with sanctions relief before Iran resumes full compliance and risk losing the leverage it has or doubles down on demands for full compliance first and risk Tehran walking away from the deal completely.

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South Korean authorities have seized a second ship suspected of supplying oil to North Korea in violation of international sanctions, officials say.

The Panama-flagged tanker, which is named Koti, is being held at a port near the western city of Pyeongtaek.

South Korea has already impounded a Hong Kong-registered ship it suspects of secretly transferring 600 tonnes of refined oil to a North Korean vessel.

The UN imposed sanctions on the North in response to its weapons programme.

The latest vessel seized, which has a mostly Chinese and Burmese crew, is a 5,100-tonne oil carrier, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

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South Korea revealed on Friday that it was holding the Hong Kong-registered Lighthouse Winmore.

That ship entered Yeosu port in South Korea on 11 October to load up with refined oil and left for Taiwan four days later.

But instead of going to Taiwan it transferred the oil to a North Korean ship and three other vessels in international waters on 19 October, South Korean officials were quoted as saying.

The Lighthouse Winmore was seized when it returned to Yeosu in November and remains in South Korea.

Image copyrightAFP

Last week, US President Donald Trump blamed China for allowing illegal oil shipments to reach North Korea.

In a tweet, Mr Trump said that China had been “caught red-handed”.

He said there could never be “a friendly solution” to the North Korea crisis if oil was allowed to be exported to Pyongyang.

Beijing, which earlier this month supported the US-drafted UN resolution that includes measures to slash the North’s petrol imports by up to 90%, denies the allegation.

The resolution bans ship-to-ship transfers of any goods destined for Pyongyang.

The tough new sanctions were a fresh attempt to curb North Korea’s controversial nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42527294

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The nation says its five-year space development program is aimed at helping to improve its economy.

“Some countries have manipulated U.N. sanctions resolutions against us and hindered the sovereign country’s space development. It is not a tolerable act,” the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said. “It is a global trend that a country seeks the economic growth with the space program.”

The plan to launch satellites is seen as an attempt by Pyongyang to build a case to potentially launch a long-range rocket, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. The North fired long-range rockets in 2012 and 2016.

Ballistic missiles and the rockets used to launch satellites have similar bodies, engines and other technology.

North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador Kim In Ryong announced North Korea’s plan for 2016-2020 to develop “practical satellites that can contribute to the economic development and improvement of the people’s living” at a U.N. General Assembly committee meeting earlier this month.

He said the U.S. was “going frantic to illegalize our development of outer space,” by claiming it violated U.N. sanctions.

Kim said no U.N. article states that satellite launches threaten international peace and security, “nor is there any article stipulating that one cannot use ballistic rocket technology in launching a satellite.”

“The U.S. is the country that launched the largest number of satellites and yet it claims that our launch of satellites is a threat to international peace and security,” Kim said. “This is a preposterous allegation and extreme double standards.”

Kim said North Korea launched its first pilot communications satellite, Kwangmyongsong-1, in August 1998. He said his country “entered the practical satellite developing stage” with the successful entry into orbit of Kwangmyongsong-4 in February 2016.

North Korea has not made any provocations since it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. Earlier in the summer, it launched missiles over Japan and test-launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported that Chinese police arrested two North Korean agents in Beijing on suspicion of plotting to murder Kim Han Sol, the 22-year-old nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim Han Sol’s father Kim Jong Nam — Kim Jong Un’s half-brother — was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur Airport in Malaysia on Feb. 13. Two women are currently on trial for murder, which they deny. Four other suspects including the alleged mastermind of the plot remain at large.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/30/north-korea-vows-launch-more-satellites-into-orbit/812313001/

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Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian Senate upper house, is set to discuss the concerns surrounding Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes in separate meetings with the deputy head of North Korea’s legislature and the head of South Korea’s parliament on Monday.

The representatives from Pyongyang and Seoul will be in St Petersburg for a congress of parliamentarians and with Russia among those countries calling for a reduction in tensions following North Korea’s recent threats, the congress provides a good opportunity for Russia to try to make some progress in quelling fears of war.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Senate’s international relations committee, told Russia media: “I believe that during the meetings the Russian side will call [on North and South Korea] to hold direct contacts.

“This would be quite natural, but of course we cannot, and should not, force anyone to do so.”

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The measures restrict oil imports and ban textile exports. The latter is aimed at starving the North of income for its weapons programmes.

The US had originally proposed harsher sanctions including a total ban on oil imports.

The vote was only passed unanimously after Pyongyang allies Russia and China agreed to the reduced measures.

The sanctions, which were passed at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, were met with anger by North Korea.

A statement on state news agency KNCA called the US a “bloodthirsty beast obsessed with the wild dream” of reversing Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. It warned that if the US did eventually push through harsher sanctions, North Korea would “absolutely make sure that the US pays due price”.

The US had called for the harshest ever sanctions on North Korea including a total ban on oil imports, a measure seen by some analysts as hugely destabilising for the regime.

But the new measures instead only place limits on such products. China, Pyongyang’s main economic ally, supplies most of North Korea’s crude oil.

A proposed asset freeze and travel ban on leader Kim Jong-un have also been dropped.

A ban on exports of textiles – Pyongyang’s second biggest export and a significant source of income – and measures to prohibit North Koreans from working overseas will go ahead.

The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, told the Security Council after the vote: “We don’t take pleasure in further strengthening sanctions today. We are not looking for war.”

“The North Korean regime has not yet passed the point of no return… If it agrees to stop its nuclear program, it can reclaim its future.”

Monday’s resolution was the ninth one unanimously adopted by the UN since 2006.

Testing North Korea with sanctions
30 November 2016: UN slapped sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear programme, targeting its valuable coal trade with China, slashing exports by about 60% under a new sales cap. Exports of copper, nickel, silver, zinc and the sale of statues were also banned

What happened next? On 14 May 2017, North Korea tested what it said was a “newly developed ballistic rocket” capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead

2 June 2017: UN placed new sanctions, imposing a travel ban and asset freeze on four entities and 14 officials, including the head of North Korea’s overseas spying operations

What happened next? On 4 July, North Korea said it carried out its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The Hwasong-14, it said, could hit “any part of the world” (US estimates said that this was unlikely)

6 August: UN unanimously agrees to the banning of North Korean exports of coal, ore and other raw materials along with limiting investments in the country

What happened next? On 3 September, North Korea said it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb – many times more powerful than an atomic bomb – that can be miniaturised and loaded on to a long-range missile

Russia, which had earlier said further sanctions would be “useless” on North Korea, agreed to the resolution as “leaving nuclear tests without a firm reaction would be wrong”, said its UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia.

China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday (link in Chinese) that North Korea had “ignored international opposition and once again conducted a nuclear test, severely violating UN Security Council resolutions.”

It also repeated its call for a “peaceful resolution” instead of a military response, adding: “China will never allow the peninsula to descend into war and chaos.”

Both Russia and China reiterated their proposal that the US and South Korea freeze all military drills – which anger North Korea – and asked for a halt in the deployment of the controversial anti-missile system Thaad, in exchange for Pyongyang’s cessation of its weapons programmes.

Ms Haley last week dismissed this proposal as “insulting”.

US President Donald Trump had previously warned that the US could cut off trade with countries that did business with North Korea.

In August, a round of US sanctions banned exports including coal, costing North Korea an estimated $1bn (£767m) – about a third of its entire export economy.

A UN Security Council resolution bans North Korea from all nuclear and missile weapons development.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41235157

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One of the bold posters, released through state-controlled media on Thursday, depicts multiple rockets being fired at the US continent, which is covered by a burning American flag.

The second shows another barrage of missiles streaking down towards an already shattered Capitol building, the symbol of the US government.

The poster bears the labels “Military option. Pre-emptive strike. Sanctions resolution.” Red missiles emerge from a North Korean flag with the words “our answer!”

The posters are a sign of what has been a particularly tense period between the US and North Korea.

US President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang last week that it would face “fire and fury” if it did not cease to threaten America with its nuclear weapons programme.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un retaliated with a chilling warning that he may launch four ballistic missiles within 25 miles of the American Pacific island territory of Guam.

The tensions abated earlier this week when Kim announced he would put his plans to target Guam on ice for now, while watching America’s next move.

But the threat of conflict could escalate again next week when the US carries out annual joint military drills with South Korea, a routine exercise that Pyongyang views as a precursor to invasion.

The posters clearly denounced UN sanctions, after the latest round was slapped on North Korea on August 5 following its milestone intercontinental ballistic missile test in July. The sanctions are so severe that they could slash the pariah state’s $3 billion annual export revenue by a third.

North Korea frequently depicts its ire with the US in colourful propaganda posters and videos.

During an earlier escalation of tensions in April, Pyongyang released a video showing an aircraft carrier being hit after the US said it had deployed a navy strike group, led by supercarrier Carl Vinson, within “striking distance” of North Korea.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/18/north-korea-releases-aggressive-propaganda-posters-boasting/

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The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking at an event at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course, said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue.

“They will be met with the fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” Trump said.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea described a new round of United Nations sanctions as an attempt “to strangle a nation” and warned that in response “physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”

While more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. The assessment’s broad conclusions were verified by two U.S. officials familiar with the document. It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially last year claimed to have done so.

The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

An assessment this week by the Japanese Ministry of Defense also concludes there is evidence to suggest that North Korea has achieved miniaturization.

Kim Jong Un is becoming increasingly confident in the reliability of his nuclear arsenal, analysts have concluded, explaining perhaps the dictator’s willingness to engage in defiant behavior, including missile tests that have drawn criticism even from North Korea’s closest ally, China. On Saturday, both China and Russia joined other members of the U.N. Security Council in approving punishing new economic sanctions, including a ban on exports that supply up to a third of North Korea’s annual $3 billion earnings.

The nuclear progress further raises the stakes for President Trump, who has vowed that North Korea will never be allowed to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Saturday on MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt Show, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the prospect of a North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs would be “intolerable, from the president’s perspective.”

“We have to provide all options . . . and that includes a military option,” he said. But McMaster said the administration would do everything short of war to “pressure Kim Jong Un and those around him, such that they conclude it is in their interest to denuclearize.” The options said to be under discussion ranged from new multilateral negotiations to reintroducing U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, officials familiar with internal discussions said.

Determining the precise makeup of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has long been a difficult challenge for intelligence professionals because of the regime’s culture of extreme secrecy and insularity. The country’s weapons scientists have conducted five nuclear tests since 2006, the latest being a 20- to 30-kiloton detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, that produced a blast estimated to be up to twice that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

But producing a compact nuclear warhead that can fit inside a missile is a technically demanding feat, one that many analysts believed was still beyond North Korea’s grasp. Last year, state-run media in Pyongyang displayed a spherical device that government spokesmen described as a miniaturized nuclear warhead, but whether it was a real bomb remained unclear. North Korean officials described the September detonation as a successful test of a small warhead designed to fit on a missile, though many experts were skeptical of the claim.

Kim has repeatedly proclaimed his intention to field a fleet of nuclear-tipped ICBMs as a guarantor of his regime’s survival. His regime took a major step toward that goal last month with the first successful tests of a missile with intercontinental range. Video analysis of the latest test led some analysts to conclude that the missile caught fire and disintegrated as it plunged back toward Earth’s surface, suggesting North Korea’s engineers might not yet be capable of building a reentry vehicle that can carry the warhead safely through the upper atmosphere. But U.S. analysts and many independent experts believe that this hurdle will be overcome by late next year.

“What initially looked like a slow-motion Cuban missile crisis is now looking more like the Manhattan Project, just barreling along,” said Robert Litwak, a nonproliferation expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of “Preventing North Korea’s Nuclear Breakout,” published by the center this year. “There’s a sense of urgency behind the program that is new to the Kim Jong Un era.”

While few discount North Korea’s progress, some prominent U.S. experts warned against the danger of overestimating the threat. Siegfried Hecker, director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the last known U.S. official to personally inspect North Korea’s nuclear facilities, has calculated the size of North Korea’s arsenal at no more than 20 to 25 bombs. Hecker warned of potential risks that can come from making Kim into a bigger menace than he actually is.

“Overselling is particularly dangerous,” said Hecker, who visited North Korea seven times between 2004 and 2010 and met with key leaders of the country’s weapons programs. “Some like to depict Kim as being crazy — a madman — and that makes the public believe that the guy is undeterrable. He’s not crazy and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable.”

“The real threat,” Hecker said, “is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”

In the past, U.S. intelligence agencies have occasionally overestimated the North Korean threat. In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration assessed that Pyongyang was close to developing an ICBM that could strike the U.S. mainland — a prediction that missed the mark by more than a decade. More recently, however, analysts and policymakers have been taken repeatedly by surprise as North Korea achieved key milestones months or years ahead of schedule, noted Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ East Asia Nonproliferation Program. There was similar skepticism about China’s capabilities in the early 1960s, said Lewis, who has studied that country’s pathway to a successful nuclear test in 1964.

“There is no reason to think that the North Koreans aren’t making the same progress after so many successful nuclear explosions,” Lewis said. “The big question is why do we hold the North Koreans to a different standard than we held [Joseph] Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao Zedong’s China? North Korea is testing underground, so we’re always going to lack a lot of details. But it seems to me a lot of people are insisting on impossible levels of proof because they simply don’t want to accept what should be pretty obvious.”

Fifield reported from Krabi, Thailand. Yuki Oda in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html

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The threat comes two days after Donald Trump welcomed the single largest economic sanctions package ever on Kim Jong-un’s regime.

It comes at a time when it is clear that tensions are at an all-time high between the Hermit State and US, and that an all-out war could be days away.

The North’s statement, published by state media, said the sanctions were caused by a “heinous US plot to isolate and stifle” North Korea.

The warmongering nation said it will take “action of justice” as it warned UN sanctions will never force it to negotiate over its growing nuclear programme.

The UN resolution bans all North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also limits the number of North Koreans permitted to work abroad, and bars countries from entering into new joint ventures with North Korea or investing in current ones.

The resolution also adds nine people and four entities – including North Korea’s primary foreign exchange bank – to the UN blacklist.

The sanctions were imposed in response to Jong-un’es five nuclear tests and four long-range missile launches and claims it can hit the United States with nuclear warheads.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, told Fox News: “It is time for North Korea to realise, we are not playing anymore.

She added: “A third of their trade exports have been hit, and we basically gave them a kick in the gut with a billion dollars of sanctions that they are going to begin to feel right away.”

Jong-un’s only ally, on Sunday, warned the crackpot leader to stop testing nuclear bombs and missiles.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi Wang said: “The Chinese side urged the North Korean side to calmly handle the resolutions and to not do anything unbeneficial towards the international community such as a nuclear test.”

Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/837803/North-korea-news-US-Kim-Jong-un-world-war-three-UN-sanctions

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