North Korea preparing for sixth nuclear test

North Korea may be preparing for sixth nuclear weapon test, South Korea says
Melissa Quinn
South Korean officials are warning that North Korea may be preparing for a sixth nuclear weapon test, according to a report.
During a parliamentary session, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told South Korean lawmakers it picked up signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another nuclear test at its Punggye-ri underground test site, CNN reported Monday.
Pyongyang last held a nuclear test in September, when the rogue regime detonated what it said was a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a missile. Analysts, though, said it is almost impossible to verify North Korea’s claim.
Kim Byung-kee, a member of South Korea’s Democratic Party, said the South Korean intelligence agency reported that North Korea “has completed its preparation to carry out a nuclear test at Tunnel 2 and Tunnel 3 of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.”
The lawmaker added that the National Intelligence Service also detected activity indicating Tunnel 4 was being prepared for additional construction work. Work on the tunnel was stopped last year.
North Korean officials told CNN the U.S. could be punished for going forward with its U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which are taking place on the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang said the exercises, which are conducted annually and began Aug. 21, come at the “worst possible moment.”
The North Korean officials said “the Americans would be wholly responsible” if there was an escalation with “catastrophic consequences.”
While North Korea prepares for its sixth nuclear weapons test, the rogue regime has continued to test missiles, with the most recent test occurring Saturday.

North Korea Fires More Nuclear Missiles

Seoul: North Korea fires several projectiles to sea

SEOUL, South Korea –

South Korea says North Korea has fired several unidentified projectiles to the sea in what appears to be the latest weapons tests for the country that has been rapidly expanding its nuclear weapons and missile program.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday that that the projectiles were fired from an area from the North’s eastern coast and flew about 250 kilometers (155 miles).

The JCS says the South Korea and U.S. militaries were analyzing the launch.
The launch comes weeks after North Korea created a tense standoff with the United States by threatening to lob some of its missiles toward Guam.
North Korea also successfully flight-tested a pair of intercontinental ballistic missiles in July that analysts say could reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected

Korea is not a Shia Horn (Daniel 8:8)

Tillerson Suggests North Korea May Soon Be Ready for Talks

Gardiner Harris and Eileen Sullivan

A military parade celebrating the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, in Pyongyang in April. Wong Maye-E/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In some of the most conciliatory remarks to North Korea made by the Trump administration, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson complimented the government in Pyongyang for going more than two weeks without shooting any missiles or blowing up any nuclear bombs.

“I’m pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated some level of restraint,” Mr. Tillerson said, suggesting that the brief pause in testing may be enough to meet the administration’s preconditions for talks.

“We hope that this is the beginning of the signal we’ve been looking for,” he said, adding that “perhaps we’re seeing our pathway to sometime in the near future of having some dialogue. We need to see more on their part. But I want to acknowledge the steps they’ve taken so far.”

That was the carrot. As for the stick, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against China and Russia on Tuesday as part of its campaign to pressure North Korea to stop its development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

The two moves are part of the Trump administration’s dual-track strategy for taming the nuclear threat from North Korea — ratcheting up economic pressure on the government through sanctions while simultaneously offering a diplomatic pathway to peace.

That second approach has gradually softened in recent months. In his first trip to Seoul, South Korea, in March, Mr. Tillerson appeared to make North Korea’s surrender of nuclear weapons a prerequisite for talks. At that time, he said that negotiations could “only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction,” and that “only then will we be prepared to engage them in talks.”

In recent months, he has suggested that Pyongyang only had to demonstrate that it was serious about a new path before talks could begin, suggesting that a significant pause in the country’s provocative activities would be enough. And three weeks ago, he went out of his way to assure the North’s leaders “the security they seek.”

Then, a little more than two weeks ago, the United Nations Security Council passed its toughest sanctions yet against North Korea. And the next day, Mr. Tillerson met with his counterparts in South Korea and China in an effort to increase pressure on Pyongyang.

The United Nations sanctions were already starting to have an impact curtailing trade in China and infuriating Chinese seafood importers, who had to return goods to North Korea.

Mr. Tillerson’s remarks Tuesday were particularly noteworthy because they were made in a news conference that was otherwise devoted to discussing the Trump administration’s new approach to the war in Afghanistan.

Graphic

Can North Korea Actually Hit the United States With a Nuclear Weapon?

Six systems that North Korea needs to master to achieve a long-sought goal: being able to reliably hit the United States.

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There is fierce debate in the administration over what course to take with North Korea — and whether a combination of diplomatic outreach and military threats would change North Korea’s current direction. Tension between the United States and North Korea has escalated over North Korea’s recent missile tests. Most intelligence assessments have concluded that the North has no incentive to begin negotiations until it demonstrates, even more conclusively than it has in recent weeks, that its nuclear weapon could reach the United States mainland.

But Mr. Tillerson’s diplomatic outreach has been repeatedly undercut by President Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, including a threat to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States.

The new sanctions issued by the Treasury Department affect six individuals and 10 organizations with financial ties to Pyongyang’s weapons program. They represent a gradual increase in pressure on China, which has long frustrated the United States for economically supporting the regime in Pyongyang. Some 90 percent of North Korea’s trade is with China.

“It is unacceptable for individuals and companies in China, Russia and elsewhere to enable North Korea to generate income used to develop weapons of mass destruction and destabilize the region,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In June, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank, a Chinese company and two Chinese citizens to crack down on the financing of North Korea’s weapons program, the first set of secondary sanctions against North Korea that directly targeted Chinese intermediaries.

“I think it’s a significant action by the Trump administration,” Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit group in Washington, said of the new round of sanctions.

Tuesday’s actions appeared to be part of a larger campaign to pressure individuals, businesses and countries with financial ties to North Korea, said Mr. Ruggiero, a former official in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the Treasury. “It looks like the beginnings of a broad pressure campaign,” Mr. Ruggiero said.

Among the Chinese companies sanctioned on Tuesday is Mingzheng International Trading Limited, considered by the Treasury Department to be a “front company” for North Korea’s state-run Foreign Trade Bank, which has been subject to American sanctions since 2013.

In June, United States prosecutors accused Mingzheng of laundering money for North Korea and announced that the Justice Department would seek $1.9 million in civil penalties.

The new United States sanctions address how other nations tolerate North Korea’s behavior, particularly China, said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“These sanctions expand the U.S. blacklist for companies tied to North Korea’s economic activity and are designed to curb the hard currency available to Pyongyang,” Ms. Rosenberg said in an email. “I think we should expect more sanctions of this nature, including more designations to highlight the role of China to enable North Korea’s illicit aims.”

North Korea Is Not Our Real Enemy

North Korea’s leader holds fire on Guam missile launch
Al Jazeera
North Korea’s leader received a report from his army on plans to fire missiles towards Guam and said he will watch the actions of the US before making a decision to fire, North Korea’s official news agency said on Tuesday.
Kim Jong-un ordered the army to be ready to launch should he make the decision for military action.
North Korea said last week it was finalising plans to launch four missiles into the waters near the US Pacific territory of Guam, and its army would report the attack plan to Kim and wait for his order.
Kim, who inspected the command of North Korea’s army on Monday, examined the plan for a long time and discussed it with army officers, the official KCNA agency said.
“He said that if the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions on the Korean Peninsula and in its vicinity, testing the self-restraint of the DPRK, the latter will make an important decision as it already declared,” it said.
The DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea’s threat to attack near Guam prompted a surge in tensions in the region last week, with US President Donald Trump warning he would unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it did so.
Christopher Hill: US and North Korea in a ‘propaganda spat’
Kim said the US should make the right choice “in order to defuse the tensions and prevent the dangerous military conflict on the Korean Peninsula”.
The visit to the Korean People’s Army Strategic Force marks Kim’s first public appearance in about two weeks.
Trump spoke to Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, late on Monday to discuss North Korea.
“President Trump reaffirmed that the United States stands ready to defend and respond to any threat or actions taken by North Korea against the United States or its allies, South Korea and Japan,” a White House statement said early Tuesday.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday there would be no military action without Seoul’s consent and his government would prevent war by all means.
“Military action on the Korean Peninsula can only be decided by South Korea and no one else can decide to take military action without the consent of South Korea,” Moon said in a speech to commemorate the anniversary of the nation’s liberation from Japanese military rule in 1945.
“The government, putting everything on the line, will block war by all means,” Moon said.
North Korea is angry about new UN sanctions over its expanding nuclear weapons and missile programme and annual military drills between the US and South Korea beginning later this month that North Korea condemns as invasion rehearsals.
Guam braces for planned North Korea missile strike
A Guam official said he was “ecstatic” as North Korea appeared to back away from its threat.
“There doesn’t appear to be any indication, based on what we’re hearing, that there will be any missiles attacking in the near future or in the distant future,” Lieutenant-Governor Ray Tonorio said.
Jim Mattis, US defence secretary, warned on Monday the US military would be prepared to intercept a missile fired by North Korea if it was headed to Guam.
Mattis said that the US military would know the trajectory of a missile fired by North Korea within moments and would “take it out” if it looked like it would hit the US Pacific territory.
“The bottom line is, we will defend the country from an attack. For us that is war,” Mattis said.
Richard Broinowski, former Australian ambassador to Seoul, told Al Jazeera from Sydney on Tuesday that there was no real threat of war.
“Kim Jong-un is not stupid. He’s led his country for a number of years now, and he’s done well. There’s a lot of bluster and hyperbole,” he said. “On the part of the US, we have a president who is unschooled and unskilled in diplomacy. But he’s surrounded by people who are.”
He also said that the solution was direct talks without conditions between the US and North Korea.
“It’s been tried before and it needs to be tried again,” said Broinowski.

CIA Correct: No War with Korea (Daniel 8)

CIA’s Pompeo says no ‘imminent’ threat of nuclear war

By Joseph Weber Published August 13, 2017

Fox News

Now PlayingCIA Director Mike Pompeo talks North Korea nuclear threat

CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Sunday defended President Trump’s tough rhetoric toward North Korea and praised the administration for “uniting the world” in trying to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula while making clear there is no intelligence that shows a nuclear war is “imminent.”

“There’s nothing imminent,” Pompeo told “Fox News Sunday.” “There’s no intelligence indicating we’re on the cusp of a nuclear war.”

Pompeo praised the efforts of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in getting China and Russia to join in a unanimous U.N. vote recently to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea, amid the country’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
Trump last week said North Korea would be met with “fire and fury” if leader Kim Jung Un followed through on a threat to execute a missile strike on nearby Guam, a U.S. territory with an American military base.
Despite calls for Trump to tone down the rhetoric and end the back-and-forth with Kim, the president continued to make his point, saying Friday that the United States military is “locked and loaded.”
Pompeo said Sunday, “The president made clear to the North Korea regime how America will respond if certain actions are taken.
“We are hopeful that the leader of the country will understand [Trump’s remarks] in precisely the way they were intended, to permit him to get to a place where we can get the nuclear weapons off the peninsula. …. That’s the best message you can deliver to someone who is putting America at risk.”
The director also dismissed talk from those in previous administrations who suggested the Trump White House was surprised by a news report that North Korea now has a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be put on an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the U.S.
“It doesn’t surprise me that those who came before us were surprised; they did nothing,” Pompeo said.

North Korea is Nuclear Ready

North Korea Reportedly Capable Of Making Nuclear-Tipped Missiles
Lee Jin-man/AP
U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea has developed a warhead that fits on its ballistic missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching U.S. territory, according to The Washington Post.
The Post writes: “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.”
While the latest report assumes significance in the current climate of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, it represents only more certainty over previous assessments. Four years ago, for example, the DIA said it believed with “moderate confidence” that North Korea had mastered nuclear warhead technology.
Since North Korea has conducted multiple tests of both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, the basic components for a nuclear-tipped ICBM were already known to exist. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reports on All Things Considered, the technology hurdle for Pyongyang is to produce a relatively small, lightweight weapon that North Korean missiles are capable of getting to a target.
To build a nuclear weapon, Brumfiel says, you start with a lot of conventional explosives that trigger the nuclear chain reaction.
“That makes primitive nuclear weapons very heavy, because you have to pack all this around the nuclear material,” he explains. “They are ways to trim back — you can use less high explosive, you can use it in special ways, you can use less nuclear material.”
That is apparently what North Korean scientists and engineers have managed to accomplish. And Pyongyang has made no secret of its apparent accomplishments. In 2016, Kim Jong Un was photographed next to what is believed to have been a model for a small nuclear device, nicknamed the “disco ball,” by Western observers.
However, Brumfiel says the best pieces of evidence are the nuclear tests themselves.
“They’ve done five nuclear tests now. Other countries have been able to miniaturize in fewer tests, so it seems reasonable to assume that they’ve been able to miniaturize by this point,” he says.

The Growing Korean Nuclear Threat

North Korea’s ICBM tests may be a deception tactic to hide a much more capable threat

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A top missile analyst says the ICBMs North Korea shows off may be propaganda that has fooled experts and the military.
Most analysis of North Korean missiles comes from images released from Pyongyang, and they could be purposefully deceptive. The real ICBM program may be a hidden silo-based missile, which would be much more dangerous.
North Korea has shocked the world by making huge strides in missile technology since debuting an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, but according to James Kiessling, the road-mobile missile may just be an act of deception.
Kiessling, who works at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, gave Business Insider his personal views on North Korea, which do not represent the Pentagon’s official stance.
“If you’re really concerned about an ICBM from anyone, go back and look at history for what everyone has ever done for ICBMs,” said Kiessling. “All early liquid ICBMS are siloed.”
Through a painstaking analysis of imagery and launch statistics from North Korea’s missile program, Kiessling has concluded that the road-mobile, truck-based missiles they show off can’t actually work as planned, and may instead be purposeful distractions from a more capable missile project.
In a paper for Breaking Defense, Kiessling and his colleague Ralph Savelsberg demonstrated a model of the North Korean ICBM and concluded its small size made it basically useless for reaching the US with any kind of meaningful payload.
History suggests that building a true liquid-fueled ICBM that can be transported on a truck presents huge, if not insurmountable problems, to designers.
“The US and the Soviets tried very hard and never managed to reach a level of miniaturization and ruggedness that would support a road-mobile ICBM,” said Kiessling, referring to the minaturization of nuclear warheads needed to fit them onto missiles.
ICBMs that use liquid fuel, as North Korea’s do, are “very likely to crumple or damage the tankage” while being carted around on a bumpy truck.
“While it may not be impossible, it’s bloody difficult and extremely dangerous,” to put a liquid-fueled ICBM on a truck, according to Kiessling.
Instead, the US, Soviets, and Chinese all created silo-based liquid-fueled missiles, as the static missiles are more stable and less prone to sustaining damage.
But there’s no evidence of North Korea building a silo for missile launches, and Kiessling said that could be due to a massive deception campaign that may have fooled some of the world’s top missile experts.
Kiessling thinks that North Korea has actually been preparing for a silo-based missile that combines parts of the Hwasong-14, its ICBM, with its space-launch vehicle, the Unha. Both the Unha and the Hwasong-14 have been tested separately, and Kiessling says they could easily be combined.
This analysis matches the comments of Mike Elleman, a senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who told Business Insider he saw the Hwasong-14 as an “interim capability” that North Korea was using to demonstrate an ICBM as quickly as possible.
Elleman believes that North Korea well develop a “heavier ICBM” that “may not be mobile,” but can threaten the entire continental US and carry a heavier payload, including decoys and other penetration aides.
But other prominent analysts disagree with Kiessling’s model, saying he incorrectly judged the size of the Hwasong-14. To that, Kiessling says that North Korean imagery, which has all been purposefully released by a regime known to traffic in propaganda, is geared towards deception.
“One of the hardest problems imaginable is to find something you’re not looking for,” said Kiessling, of a possible missile silo in North Korea.
“If I was in the place of Kim Jong Un, and I wanted to have a cleverly-assembled ICBM program, I’d do it the way everyone else does it,” said Kiessling, referring to silo-based missiles. “But at the same time, you run a deception program to distract everyone else from what you’re doing until you’re done.”
A silo would also prove an inviting target for any US strikes on North Korea, as the target can’t hide once its found. If the US were to find out that North Korea hadn’t succeeded in miniaturizing its warheads enough to fit on its mobile missiles, a smaller-scale strike against fixed targets may seem like an attractive, doable option.

Pressure Mounts Against North Korea

US flies bombers over Korean peninsula after ICBM test | News

FAST FACTS

• US ‘ready to respond with rapid, lethal and overwhelming force’
• Japan vows to put ‘heaviest possible pressure’ on North
• China warns launch violates UN Security Council resolutions
• Trump derides Chinese response in tweets: ‘They do NOTHING for us with North Korea’

The US has flown two bomber jets over the Korean peninsula in a show of force after recent North Korean missile tests, according to a US Air Force statement.
Saturday’s move came after North Korea said it conducted another successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday that proved its ability to strike the US mainland, drawing a sharp warning from President Donald Trump.
The flight of B-1B bomber jets was in direct response to the missile test and the previous July 3 launch of the “Hwansong-14” rocket, the US statement said.
The bombers took off from a US airbase in Guam, and were joined by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets during the exercise, according to the statement.
“North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability,” Pacific Air Forces commander General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy said. “If called upon, we are ready to respond with rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing”.
The US has in the past used similar flights as a show of force in response to North Korean missile or nuclear tests.

Pyongyang: Entire US in range

The Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed “great satisfaction” after the Hwasong-14 reached a maximum height of 3,725 kilometres and travelled 998 kilometres, before accurately landing in waters off Japan.
The agency quoted Kim as saying that the launch reaffirmed the reliability of the country’s ICBM system and ability to fire at “random regions and locations at random times”, with the “entire” US mainland now within range.
Analysts estimate that the North’s first ICBM in early July could have reached Alaska, and said that the latest missile appeared to extend that range significantly.
Trump condemned the test as a threat to the world, and rejected North Korea’s claim that nuclear power ensures its security.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said he held telephone talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and agreed on the need to put “the heaviest possible pressure” on North Korea.
“We confirmed that we will closely cooperate in adopting a fresh [UN Security Council] resolution, including severe measures, and working on China and Russia,” Kishida told reporters.
China, the North’s main ally, said that it opposed North Korea’s missile launches, which it said violate UN Security Council resolutions designed to curb Pyongyang’s banned nuclear and missile programmes.
“At the same time, China hopes all parties act with caution, to prevent tensions from continuing to escalate,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
However, Trump said he was “very disappointed in China”.
In messages on Twitter, he wrote: “Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet…
“…they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!”
Kiyul Chung, professor at China’s Tsinghua University, said China has few options and is doing all it can.
“Chinese participation in UN sanctions against [North Korea] has been [significant],” he told Al Jazeera. “What Trump says doesn’t mean much.”
He explained that besides pressuring China, the US has few options.
“I don’t think China will do more, because there is nothing more it can do,” he said.

Growing concern

Washington and its allies have watched with growing concern as Pyongyang has progressed towards its goal of having all of the US within range of its missiles, to counter what it labels as US aggression.
There are other hurdles, including building nuclear warheads to fit on those missiles and ensuring reliability.
But many analysts have been surprised by how quickly Kim has developed North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes, despite several rounds of UN Security Council sanctions that have squeezed the impoverished country’s economy.
North Korea is not believed to have yet developed the technology to miniaturise a nuclear weapon to fit in a missile’s warhead.

Source: AP news agency

North Korea Closes in on U.S.

North Korea tests another ICBM, putting U.S. cities in range
Jack Kim and Elaine Lies
SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – North Korea fired a missile on Friday that experts said was capable of striking Los Angeles and other U.S. cities and the United States and South Korea responded by staging a joint missile exercise, the South Korean news agency Yonhap said.
The unusual late-night launch added to exasperation in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo over Pyongyang’s continuing development of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to deliver them. North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s military had already raised alarms early this month with its first ICBM launch.
“As a result of their launches of ICBM-level missiles, this clearly shows the threat to our nation’s safety is severe and real,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who planned to call a meeting of his National Security Council.
Following a meeting of South Korea’s National Security Council, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he wanted the U.N. Security Council to discuss new and stronger sanctions against the North, the presidential Blue House said.
The top U.S. military official, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, and Admiral Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, spoke by phone with the top South Korean military official, General Lee Sun-jin, to discuss military response options to the launch.
Later the United States and South Korea took part in a ballistic missile exercise.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered discussions to be held with the United States on deploying additional THAAD anti-missile defense units following North Korea’s test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, his office said on Saturday.
Moon also wanted the United Nations Security Council to discuss new and stronger sanctions against the North, the presidential Blue House said following a National Security Council meeting.
Two units of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system have been deployed by the U.S. military in a southern South Korean region, with four more planned but delayed over concerns about their environmental SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered discussions to be held with the United States on deploying additional THAAD anti-missile defense units following North Korea’s test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, his office said on Saturday.
Moon also wanted the United Nations Security Council to discuss new and stronger sanctions against the North, the presidential Blue House said following a National Security Council meeting.
Two units of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system have been deployed by the U.S. military in a southern South Korean region, with four more planned but delayed over concerns about their environmental impact.
Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, Elaine Lies and William Mallard in Tokyo, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Writing by Philip Blenkinsop and Bill Trott; Editing by John Stonestreet and James Dalgleish

Iran and Korea Prepare ICBM Launches

Iran poised to launch rocket into space, as North Korea readies another missile test, US officials say
Lucas Tomlinson
Two enemies of America are poised for upcoming rocket launches, two senior U.S. officials told Fox News, with another North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch expected as soon as Wednesday night and Iran on the verge of sending its own vehicle into space.
Iran’s Simorgh space-launch vehicle is believed to be carrying a satellite, marking the second time in more than a year that Tehran has attempted to put an operational satellite into orbit — something the Islamic Republic has never done successfully, according to one of the officials who has not authorized to discuss a confidential assessment.
Iran’s last space launch in April 2016 failed to place a satellite into orbit, the official said.
The intelligence community is currently monitoring Iran’s Semnan launch center, located about 140 miles east of Tehran, where officials say the “first and second stage airframes” have been assembled on a launch pad and a space launch is expected “at any time,” according to the official.
Just days after President Trump took office, Iran conducted its first ballistic missile test under the new administration, prompting the White House to put Tehran “on notice.” Since then there have been other ballistic missile and cruise missile tests, including one from a midget submarine in early May — a type of submarine used by both Iran and North Korea.
North Korea and Iran have long been accused of sharing missile technology.
“The very first missiles we saw in Iran were simply copies of North Korean missiles,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Over the years, we’ve seen photographs of North Korean and Iranian officials in each other’s countries, and we’ve seen all kinds of common hardware.”
U.S. officials are skeptical, however, that North Korea and Iran are coordinating their rocket and missile launches.
While Iran insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, officials have long said any components used to put a satellite into orbit can also be used for building an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States.
U.N. resolution 2231 says Iran is “called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,” according to the text of the agreement which went into effect days after the landmark Iran nuclear agreement that was engineered by the Obama administration.
Critics have said that language was purposefully watered down to “called upon” instead of a more restrictive phrase because Russia intervened.
In a sign Congress is losing patience with both Iran and North Korea, the House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed (419-3) new sanctions targeting Iran, North Korea and Russia, due in part to Iran and North Korea’s missile programs.
News of Iran’s pending rocket launch coincides with more evidence North Korea is also preparing to test another ICBM, perhaps as early as Wednesday night — a date that would coincide with the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, which ended the fighting in the Korean War, but technically not the war itself.
U.S. officials say North Korea has recently moved fueling equipment and trucks to a launch pad near the town of Kusong, near North Korea’s border with China and about 100 miles north of the capital city of Pyongyang.
North Korea has a history of conducting missile tests on historic dates.
North Korea’s first successful launch of a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska — a rocket the Pentagon now calls the KN-20 — occurred on July 4, while the U.S. celebrated Independence Day.
That North Korean ICBM traveled some 1,700 miles into space, seven times higher than the orbit of NASA’s International Space Station. It is not clear, however, if the rocket’s “re-entry” vehicle successfully returned to Earth in one piece after it splashed down in the Sea of Japan hundreds of miles off the Korean peninsula.
Officials believe a new test of North Korea’s KN-20 is for the purpose of testing the re-entry vehicle.
Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews