On December 17, 2011, Kim Jong-il's seventeen-year rule came to an end as he reportedly succumbed to a heart attack. Nearly fifty hours after the event, the North Korean propaganda apparatus sprang into action, informing the world of Kim's passing and proclaiming Kim Jong-un, twenty-nine years old, the "great successor." Moving at a rapid pace, the transition of power appears to have gone smoothly as the young Kim received the titles of supreme leader (ch'eogo ryo'ngdoja) and supreme commander (Choson inmin'gun ch'oego) of the armed forces. An entirely different set of signals has highlighted what appears to be a collective leadership that will advise Kim and facilitate his consolidation of power.
Going forward, Pyongyangwatchers will begin to key in on a number of issues central to the survival of this new regime. Has the leadership paradigm of one central decision-maker been replaced by something new? What challenges does Kim Jong-un face to consolidating his power? How will the party-military relationship evolve? What is the prognosis for near- and medium-term stability of this new regime?
At the time of Kim's death, the North Korean leadership was moving through the second phase of a three-phase succession. This phase, which was launched with the Third Party Conference in September 2010, was to mark a period of on-the-job training for the heir apparent. It was also the phase in which the regime was to be rewired in order to accommodate a post-Kim Jong-il leadership configuration. In the third phase, Kim Jong-un would be appointed to additional senior party leadership bodies and receive the titles of power, much as his father did in the early 1990s.
Kim's death short-circuited this phased approach to leadership transfer. Instead, the regime is now using the mourning period to rapidly move through the third phase of the succession. On December 30, the Politburo passed a decree formally transferring the post of supreme commander to Kim Jong-un in accordance with his father's wishes. In the coming months, we can expect the convening of a Korean Worker's Party (KWP) meeting to convey at least the title of Central Military Committee (CMC) chairman on Kim Jong-un, which, according to the recently revised Party Charter (Article 22), is tied to the title of general secretary of the party.
As the regime moves through this blitz campaign to legitimize the succession, it is yet unclear whether we are witnessing a paradigm shift in how North Koreais ruled. There is little question that the regime is trying to portray Kim Jong-un as the supreme leader with all the authority and power that the title embodies. This was made evident by the North Korean media's publication of Kim's signature, apparently a signal that he will follow his father's practice of directly signing off on policy decisions. His guidance inspection of the 105th Tank Division also points to the eagerness of the regime to push his bona fides in front of the public. After all, Kim Jong-il ceased making public appearances for nearly three months after the initial mourning period for Kim Il-sung in 1994.
But while Kim might enjoy real authority, it is his relationship with the leadership support system around him that will determine the latitude he has to make decisions on his own. Coming out of ceremonies surrounding the funeral, Kim Jong-un's collective support network appears to be divided among several groupings of individuals. If anything, these groupings reveal a party-military amalgamation. While organizationally, the leadership appears to be situated within the party apparatus, it is intimately tied to the high command, making the argument over whether the military or the party is now in ascendance a moot point.
The inner ring of this support network is made up of gatekeepers who will most likely be involved in decision-making.
· Vice Marshall (VMAR) Yi Yong-ho, director of the General Staff Department (GSD), has operational control over the armed forces.
· General Jang Song-taek, who has oversight of the internal security apparatus and the economy portfolio, is well situated to support Kim Jong-un in the running of the daily operations of the regime.
· General Kim Kyong-hui, the new leader's aunt, Politburo member, and director of the KWP Light Industry Department, will likely play an advisory role and serve as a main arbitrator within the Kim family as well as the larger North Korean leadership.
· General O Kuk-yol, National Defense Commission (NDC) vice chairman, will have input into deliberations involving tradeoffs between reform and security.
This group of four is tied to two leadership bodies (Politburo and National Defense Commission), which do not currently include Kim Jong-un but were responsible for two critical decisions in the days after Kim Jong-il's death. The new regime's first authoritative statement was issued in the name of the NDC on December 30, setting the parameters of North Korea's relationship with the South. This was quickly followed by the Politburo's proclamation of Kim as supreme commander. While both decisions do not detract from Kim's authority, they highlight his need to rely on close advisers and established institutional authorities to conduct the regime's business.
The outer ring of this leadership configuration is centered in the party's CMC, which is made up of important second- and third-generation military and security officials from across the regime. Under Kim Jong-un, the CMC might replace the NDC as the command post of military first politics. It will be responsible for crafting the "great successor's" image, gathering loyalty toward the new regime, and running the country. In terms of Kim's relationship with the military, three CMC members are particularly crucial during the transition period. All accompanied Kim Jong-un as he escorted his father's hearse through the streets of Pyongyang.
· VMAR Kim Yong-chun, as minister of People's Armed Forces, has past service in the KWP Organization Guidance Department and the Korean People's Army's (KPA) General Political Department, which give him invaluable experience in sniffing out potential disloyalty within the armed forces.
· General Kim Jong-gak is the acting head of the KPA's General Political Bureau, a responsibility that makes him the de facto third-ranking member in the high command, behind the heads of the Ministry of People's Armed Forces (MPAF) and GSD.
· General U Tong-chuk, as first vice director of the State Security Department, oversees the country's powerful secret police.
Other individuals with military portfolios bear watching, such as O Il-jong (director of the KWP Military Department), Kim Kyong-ok (first vice director of the KWP Organization Guidance Department for military affairs), and Choe Ryong-hae (KWP secretary for military affairs). They will be critical to creating and facilitating a unified and centralized party guidance system that invests the great successor with the ideological authority he will need to rule.
Looking to the future, Kim Jong-un will only be able to rely on this leadership configuration for a limited time. Ultimately, his political survival will depend on his ability to develop his own support base that will likely be drawn from up-and-coming party and military figures from the third and fourth generations. In addition, he will have to mature as a leader and hone his skills in leveraging power bases within the regime. Finally, he will have to showcase his policy skills, avoiding blunders that could call into question his leadership qualifications.
In terms of signposts, Pyongyang watchers will be looking for clues as to whether Kim Jong-un will be able to consolidate his power.
· How will the North Korean media handle upcoming events? Over the next several months, the regime will celebrate the birthdays of Kim Jong-il (February 16) and Kim Il-sung (April 15). Both are opportunities for the media to provide additional clues regarding the succession. While the media did not publicly proclaim Kim Jong-un's birthday on January 8, it did air a documentary showing him driving a tank and visiting the rocket center that launched the long-range rocket Kwangmyungsung 2 on April 5, 2009.
· Will Kim assume the chairmanship of the NDC? The regime may choose to leave the NDC post vacant. Much as Kim Il-sung became the eternal president, the regime may choose to designate Kim Jong-il as the eternal head of the NDC, an organization that embodied his leadership era. If so, this will require a change in the constitution, which currently (via Article 100) combines the posts of supreme leader and NDC chairman.
· Will Kim defer the post of general secretary until the end of the mourning period? Kim Jong-il deferred taking the post until the end of a three-year mourning period. Initial indications are that his son will not wait that long.
· When will Kim Jong-un visit China? Critical to any new North Korean leader is his visit toPyongyang's major benefactor. Kim Jong-il made his first trip as heir apparent in the early 1980s. Recent speculation was that Kim Jong-un was not ready to make such a trip unaccompanied. When this trip eventually occurs, it will reveal a lot about his ability to control the regime and interact with the outside world.
· When will Kim Jong-un's personal secretariat emerge? The personal secretariat played a central role in running the regime under Kim Jong-il. At the funeral, important figures from this personal secretariat paid public homage, including Kim Ok, Chon Il-chun (Office 39), and Yi Chol (head of the Kim family's finances). It remains to be seen who will emerge as members of Kim Jong-un's personal retinue.
· Will the collective leadership around Kim Jong-un hold together? The real question about the stability of the regime will play out not in the coming days but in the coming weeks and months, as North Korea moves through the important year of 2012 and fulfill the promise of becoming "a strong and prosperous nation." It is during this period when fissures, if they are going to occur, might manifest themselves within the leadership configuration that surrounds Kim Jong-un. Early indicators that things are not going smoothly could include erratic policymaking, mixed messages, and elite defections.
As a young man, Kim Jong-un faces many hurdles to assuming the mantle of his father. He will likely try to maintain the leadership style of Kim Jong-il, brooking no challenge to his political birthright. His skills, temperament, perseverance, and the time necessary to carry off this feat will not only dictate the future of the regime, but may well affect the future security of the region.
Now that the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) has officially announced the start of the Kim Jong-un era, the major questions on the minds of North Korean observers revolve around the durability and sustainability of the North Korean leadership under Kim Jong-un. Another way of making judgements regarding this process is to assess whether the succession process is going according to plan. The 1994 succession experience offers the North Koreans a template for how to successfully manage succession and offers a scorecard for assessing the durability of the Kim Jong-un regime. In the first few days, the North Korean leadership has made no obvious mistakes, nor has there been any evidence that the succession process is veering off track. The North Korean media has reinforced Kim Jong-un’s role, with international diplomats implicity acknowledging his position and KCNA bestowing on Kim Jong-un the titles of Great Successor and Supreme Commander. I believe that each of these elements is designed to reinforce perceptions of the inevitability of Kim Jong-un as the next leader, with the funeral being a major event designed to affirm Kim Jong-un’s new role at the same time that he pays respects to his father. This will also be the first opportunity to make judgments regarding his leadership style independent of his father.
Beyond the funeral ceremony, the calendar holds a series of events that North Korea will be able to use to its advantage to reinforce the centrality of Kim Jong-un and that therefore provide opportunities for external judgements regarding how the process is going, including:
Jan. 1: New Year’s address. North Korea normally issues a joint editorial or speech by the leader assessing the challenges and goals for the year. The 2012 address may have already been written, but can be scoured for deviations from the past and for evidence of possible rewriting post Kim Jong-il’s death. How the joint editorial is issued and whether Kim Jong-un might decide to personally deliver it as well as the substance it contains will offer some early clues to the actual role Kim Jong-un is and will be playing.
Jan. 8: Kim Jong-un’s 28th birthday and his first as leader. How will it be celebrated this year, and what messages are conveyed on this date?
Feb. 16: Kim Jong-il’s 70th birthday. Still well within the mourning period, how will this birthday be honored and what roles will Kim Jong-un and other leaders play in any commemorations on that date?
April 15: Kim Il-sung’s 100th birthday. This was to be the big celebration of the year, marking the establishment of North Korea as a “strong and prosperous state.” But what are the benchmarks for assessing Kim Jong-un’s performance toward that goal? Arguably, the benchmarks may shift to “are you better off than you were seventeen years ago?” The famine that occurred in the midst of the Kim Il-sung-Kim Jong-il succession process presents an opportunity to establish a low bar for assessing Kim Jong-un’s performance.
Beyond these dates, what other signs should be watched? Intelligence on how the succession might be going wrong will be much harder to obtain precisely because KCNA will not be reporting it and news of internal developments in North Korea remains hard to come by. In any event, much of the activity that would spark greatest interest inevitably is likely to occur underneath the surface. However, here are a few things to watch for that might suggest things are going very badly.
· Unexplained disappearances, especially of Kim Jong-un’s family members. Could be evidence of friction that would weaken allies and capability to maintain political control.
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· Overt challenges to Kim Jong-un’s authority or references to critical roles by individuals other than Kim Jong-un. Everyone is watching the activities of Jang Song-taek, Kim Kyong-hui, Yi Yong-ho, and Oh Kuk-ryol with special interest.
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· Evidence of friction between the party and military authorities, especially between the National Defense Commission and the Workers’ Party of Korea. Kim Jong-un has not received a role in the National Defense Commission, which was the seat from which his father governed. If these two organizations within the North Korean bureaucracy come into conflict, it might be evidence of a serious institutional cleavage inside North Korea.
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· Evidence of new competition among various arms of the state, especially competition for external resources, and particularly with regard to the pattern by which procurements of goods from China and other external sources are managed. Follow the money; whoever is leader will need financing in order to survive. Any contender for power will need a capacity to finance his challenge or the ability to take away from his colleagues’ power base.
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· Unusual military activity or precursors to a coup attempt. Kim Jong-il, we learned belatedly, survived a challenge from a unit based in Hamkyungdo in the mid-1990s at the height of the famine. It was ruthlessly put down, but it is important to recognize based on that experiences that Kim Jong-un may face, and could potentially survive, such a direct challenge to his rule.
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The most difficult aspect of assessing whether things are going wrong is that, like our intelligence collection capabilities which did not appear to provide effective warning that Kim Jong-il had passed away in advance of the official announcement, the critical developments that constitute a serious challenge to the Kim Jong-un leadership will also likely be lagging indicators of circumstances that have already changed. As a result, it is likely that all the parties are going to be in a reactive rather than a shaping mode, and the question is how well we are in sync regarding our assessments of the motivations and implications of the changes we see on the surface.
Unlike many of us, Japan’s prime minister did not sit back and rest at year’s end. Rather, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda took to the road to visit two of Asia’s ascending powers. He spent Christmas in Beijing, after a planned visit for earlier in December was unexpectedly postponed by China’s leaders. Yet it was his trip to New Delhi on December 27–28 that energized Tokyo’s diplomatic agenda.
Noda’s willingness to rearrange his schedule to accommodate China’s desire to change the summit dates reflects an awareness of the delicacy of the moment for Beijing. The original date of the summit coincided with the deeply painful anniversary of World War II atrocities, the day Japanese Imperial Army troops captured the city of Nanjing. Postponing a planned summit meeting may be unprecedented, yet it leaves us wondering why Beijing’s leaders did not appreciate the domestic impact of hosting Japan’s leader when they picked the date. That they saw fit to ask Tokyo to reschedule reveals perhaps a bit more confusion in Beijing than is usual. But it also reveals the efforts Japanese and Chinese governments together are making to get this important bilateral relationship back on a sound footing.
Meeting on December 26 allowed Prime Minister Noda and President Hu Jintao to focus on a much anticipated event, the death of Kim Jong-il and his succession by then underway in North Korea. As it has in the past, change in North Korea opened the way for Beijing and Tokyo to move beyond some of the more difficult bilateral issues between them and concentrate on their common interests in Northeast Asia. Prime Minister Noda had already declared his interest in sharing information with Beijing, and on consultations that would lead to regional cooperation on managing any issues that might arise as a result of instability on the Korean peninsula.
Yet it was the prime minister’s visit to India that suggested more immediate promise. Where often the Sino-Japanese relationship seems fraught, the Japan-India strategic partnership has been a source of growing potential for Tokyo. Economic relations are growing, although private sector investment by Japanese corporations seems slower than might be expected. Japan’s assistance to India in the construction of vital infrastructure projects, most notably the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project, has been consistent and of obvious importance to integrating India’s growing local economies. Japan too has found a ready partner in India for diversifying their access to rare earth materials, a stinging concern since the fall of 2010 when China abruptly reduced its exports to Tokyo of these vital metals.
Less appreciated is the growing strategic harmony between Japan and India. When I visited New Delhi in November, I was astounded at the extent of interest in the Indian strategic community in furthering the bilateral cooperation with Japan on everything from the development of space technology to nuclear cooperation and cyber security efforts. Already Japan and India have had five ministerial-level meetings to flesh out the contours of their new strategic partnership, and have agreed to institute a two-plus-two meeting each year to include defense and foreign ministers. The interaction between the Japanese and Indian militaries is also increasing, as the two navies have worked closely on anti-piracy and other maritime security missions. The armies have had several high-level exchanges, and will soon initiate staff talks. In 2012, the two nations’ air forces will also upgrade their consultations. The East Asia Summit provided an important opportunity to consider how Japan and India might work together to help shape the regional environment as well.
Tokyo and Delhi’s concerns about a rising China are certainly part of the impetus for the acceleration of strategic cooperation, and this has not gone unnoticed in Beijing. China’s military and media have been alert to this burgeoning strategic conversation between Delhi and Tokyo. I was surprised to find that even my discussion at the Observer Research Foundation, reported in Asian News International, got some air time as evidence of containment in the China Daily.
Yet Japan’s renewed diplomatic outreach is not all about China. It is clearly all about Japan, and its need for an active agenda of strategic engagement in Asia. As the prime minister’s China visit attests, Tokyo wants a strong relationship of strategic trust with Beijing. But perhaps that will take more time.
Prime Minister Noda’s diplomatic energy is reassuring, and signals clearly that he has his eye firmly on Japan’s strategic interests even as he seeks to work through the complex array of domestic issues on his agenda.
Markets and Democracy Briefs are published by CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy initiative. They are designed to offer readers a concise snapshot of current thinking on critical issues surrounding democracy and economic development in the world today.
As uprisings spread throughout the Middle East during the early months of 2011, a small band of Chinese citizens and expatriates began to call for their own Jasmine Revolution. Like their African and Middle Eastern counterparts, these activists used the Internet to urge people to gather in support of political change. However, unlike in Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya, security forces in China quickly locked down the proposed demonstration sites and arrested anyone thought to be a potential source of unrest. The demonstrations proved ephemeral, with many more police than protesters. It was a massive deployment of China’s public security forces that signaled not only the power of the country’s security apparatus but also the enormous insecurity of the country’s leaders and their concern about the organizing power of the Internet.
While the Internet may not have produced a revolution in China’s political system, it most certainly is producing an evolution. The Internet has become a virtual political system, providing an almost unprecedented level of transparency, rule of law, and official accountability. With over 450 million Chinese Internet users—and the number is increasing daily—information crosses gender, age, professional, and provincial boundaries in ways that Beijing often considers threatening. News of government corruption and cover-ups go viral in a matter of minutes, forcing the government to think quickly and flexibly and react decisively—not traditionally strengths of China’s political system.
Netizens Demand Change
What do the Chinese people want? Nothing unusual. They want their concerns heard and addressed. Chinese nationalists, for example, often rally support for their causes via the Internet. Anti-Japanese sentiment, in particular, has been a recurring theme among online Chinese nationalists. Periodically, Chinese nationalists have taken to the Internet and the street—often in very large numbers—to protest historical inaccuracies in Japanese textbooks and to call for retribution. Nationalists have also initiated anti-Japanese protests after recent territorial disputes in the South China Sea, perhaps encouraging the government to adopt a tougher stance in its negotiations with Japan.
Yet online activism in China is the domain not only of the nationalist but also of the political reformer. Much of what transpires on the Web in China is bringing transparency to the political system. In late 2010, Chinese netizens contradicted official reports by covering a significant environmental disaster in Jilin province, where thousands of barrels of pollutants were dumped into a water source by a local chemical plant. In the ten days that it took Chinese officials to admit to the disaster, thousands of citizens were informed of the cover-up via the Internet. They responded by purchasing a massive amount of bottled water and angrily denouncing the government’s inaction. It was only after citizens refused to believe the official stories that the government finally acknowledged the disaster and handed out free bottles of water to those in the afflicted areas. Similarly, a year earlier in Guangzhou, online transparency had caused a reversal in local government policy. Middle-class-led protests over a planned incinerator were picked up by young online netizens, who then spread the news through social media websites. Even though the activists, themselves, were not affected by the plans, they wanted the word to get out. Once enough citizens became involved, the government agreed to halt the project until a full environmental assessment was completed.1
The Internet has also become a means of holding officials accountable. In a now-famous case, in October 2010, Li Qiming, the son of a local deputy police chief. Li Gang, ran over two Hebei University students in his car while drunk—fatally injuring one and breaking the other’s leg. As he tried to escape the scene, he yelled out, “Sue me if you dare. My father is Li Gang!” Communist officials attempted to suppress information about the event but failed, as netizens from all over the country latched onto Li Qiming’s threat. Despite official reports alleging that the victim’s families were content with the government’s handling of the situation and with public apologies from both father and son, the online activists demanded (and got) more: Li Qiming was sentenced to six years in prison, his family was forced to pay over $70,000 to the families of the two students, and much of China’s online population has adopted the phrase “My father is Li Gang” as a shorthand for the widely held belief that the powerful and politically connected do not have to face the consequences of their actions.
In this way, online activism can also promote a form of the rule of law—albeit one that often resembles vigilante justice. During the summer of 2010, for example, Chinese reporter Qiu Ziming was forced into hiding after police placed him on a wanted list for writing critical stories about a local business. Qiu took his case to his blog, and a poll on Chinese website Sina.com recorded that of the more than thirty thousand people polled, 86 percent opposed the police pursuit of Qiu.2 Bowing to public pressure, the government rescinded the order of arrest and ordered the police to apologize to the reporter.
Microblogs such as Twitter and Weibo, despite being heavily censored or even blocked, have become particularly politicized Internet venues, especially among middle-class urban youth. According to the popular netizen Michael Anti, microblogs are the most important political organizing force in China today. Anti notes that through Twitter, over 1.4 million yuan were raised for the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng), an NGO of rights defense lawyers. He also points to the uncensored discussion held between the Dalai Lama and Chinese citizens in May 2010 as an example of the political influence that Twitter can exert. According to Anti, the people who participated stopped referring to the Dalai Lama as Dalai and now call him by the more respectful Dalai Lama.3 With over 120 million microblogs in China, censors haven’t yet discovered a viable long-term response and are generally reduced to attempting stop-gap measures to block certain news from going viral.4
The Party’s Response: Nailing Tofu to the Wall
Despite the inherent challenge of “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall,” as former president Bill Clinton once characterized China’s attempts to regulate cyberspace, China’s leaders are committed to controlling this evolving virtual political system. While they see the advantage of the Internet as a medium for better understanding the views of the Chinese people, their overwhelming objective is to prevent the Internet from contributing to a broad-based call for political change. To this end, Beijing has deployed both Internet police to monitor traffic and insert government opinion and the full range of technical solutions to shut down websites or blogs that the party views as particularly destabilizing.
Beijing has also sought to use the Internet to engage with the populace as a transmission vehicle from the party to the people. In what is now commonly referred to as “AstroTurf advocacy,” Internet police often add favorable opinions of the government to various social media websites under the guise of grassroots support by anonymous citizens. The party has also had its top leaders participate in Internet chats in a bid to show its engagement with the growing online community. Both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have engaged in online chats, with the latter receiving almost ninety thousand questions from a massive online audience in only two hours. However, efforts to make such Internet engagement a permanent feature of Beijing’s interaction with the Chinese people have faltered in the face of often politically sensitive questions from the Internet public.
For China’s leaders, who are already confronting over one hundred thousand protests annually,5 the Internet adds another layer of uncertainty in their bid to manage an increasingly restive society. While Beijing haltingly pushes greater transparency, the rule of law, and official accountability within the political system, the Internet forces it upon them. In the end, political evolution via the Internet may produce its own form of system revolution.
We now have a plethora of open-source information on North Korea’s collaboration with Iran on missiles. Joshua Pollack provides one of the more concise summaries in a recent issue of the Non-Proliferation Review. He notes the central problem for sanctions and interdiction: that while direct sales have declined, technology transfer and sharing arrangements with Iran are probably continuing. For those seeking more detail from the Iranian side, the International Institute for Strategic Studies has a 2010 study called Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A Net assessment (here).
But are the North Koreans and Iranians playing footsie with respect to nuclear issues as well? In an earlier overview of the IAEA report we noted that North Korea was not mentioned but that Pyongyang’s fingerprints seemed pervasive; several items about bomb design were noteworthy although they appeared to be related to HEU devices rather than the plutonium models tested by the North Koreans.
Mark Fitzpatrick—who has a long history with the issue and oversees the IISS dossiers–has a piece for The National that is more cautious and worth a careful read. For example, it calls into question reports that North Korean scientists are being rotated through Iran’s nuclear facilities, noting that they could very well be collaborating on missiles. But Fitzpatrick’s piece does give potential credence to two new pieces of information:
- A Suddeutsche Zeitung story from last August—citing Western intelligence sources—spotlights the transfer of a dual-use software program that could be useful in a weapons program; ironically, the software was initially developed by the Los Alamos lab and allows scientists to calculate whether reactions have gone critical. The German paper cites this as part of a wide-ranging cooperation agreement for which the Iranians purportedly paid $100 million.
- Fitzpatrick also mentions an unreferenced article published in Israel around the same time pulling together evidence that Iran might have been involved in financing the Syrian reactor that the Israelis bombed in 2007. (If anyone has the reference, we would be curious to see it).
The IISS dossier on Iran’s WMD, Iran’s Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Capabilities:A Net Assessment, is also cautious on the North Korean connection with respect to nuclear weapons. But its first chapter on the political and diplomatic history of the Iranian negotiations is a must-read for anyone thinking about the North Korean negotiations.
A central theme of the chapter is the fundamental conflict between Iran and the shifting contact groups—first the EU 3 or E3 (the UK, France and Germany) and then the E3+3 (China, Russia and the US)–over the right to a peaceful nuclear program. The position of the E3+3 was that demands for Iran to suspend its nuclear programs were warranted by a history of evading safeguards and failing to abide by reporting obligations to the IAEA. Because Iranian commitments were not credible, “the E3 [and E3+3] sought to turn the ‘temporary suspension’ of enrichment and reprocessing into a ‘permanent cessation’…”
Iran, by contrast, treated suspension as a concession. Tehran stuck by the letter of the NPT that Iran had the right to a peaceful nuclear program, even if the mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle could always be turned to the pursuit of fissile material and weaponization if they chose.
This issue is bound to recur in the Six Party Talks when they resume. The difference between Iran and North Korea is that Iran has the cash to pursue a nuclear option while North Korea doesn’t. Iran also has a much denser network of international financial connections than North Korea, which makes the implementation of sanctions more challenging. One manifestation of this weaker financial position is that North Korea has repeatedly raised the issue of LWRs, asking that the five parties pay for—and even construct—reactors as part of a nuclear deal
But the Iranian saga also sketches out a second breakout path: the North Koreans build their own LWR—as they are now doing–and then insist that their enrichment program is legitimate. As negotiations stall, Pyongyang continues to develop a second route to fissile material even as they are negotiating the shutdown of the plutonium path.
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