"Putin Could End This War Today, If He Wanted To"

"You will have heard a debate in Germany -- and that's one of the issues the next government will address -- of reintroducing conscription. And all of that is because we see what's happening on the Russian side, how the Russians are re-arming, doubling their military forces and clearly preparing for a possible confrontation beyond Ukraine." 

"European leaders and German leaders take [this] very seriously. And this is why, if we want to underpin the defence plans we have with capability -- and that's really what it's all about -- and you make the calculation of what that will cost you will end up significantly higher than two percent [NATO goal] and this is what the discussion should be about."

"The German government has said time and again that any settlement regarding Ukraine, first and foremost, has to be in the hands of the Ukrainians."

"We will never accept any dictated arrangement. European leaders and the Ukrainian president have been very clear that we need a settlement that really ends this war and not something that is just a prelude to the next aggression." 

German Ambassador to Canada Tjorven Bellmann 

Russia may be using bots on the Telegram messaging app to enhance the lethality of Geran-2 drones, which have been attacking Ukraine in increasing numbers, according to a report by The Economist.

In the midst of desperately attempting to successfully counter Moscow's 'Special Military Operation', and pursuing the diplomatic circuit in Europe and North America, Ukraine also faces increasing concern over how it can secure badly neeeded U.S.-produced Patriot air defence systems. Stockpiles provided to Ukraine during the previous U.S. Biden administration are shrinking badly. That the new Trump government is disinterested in providing Ukraine with fresh arms has become increasingly obvious, with U.S. President Donald Trump's belligerence toward Ukraine, and friendly relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

 

Bombarding Ukraine with drones and cruise missiles, Ukraine fears the ballistic missiles Russia has been sending across the border. Patriot missiles are the sole formula for countering Russian ballistic missiles which travel several miles each second. In power plant strikes by Moscow in 2023 and 2024, ballistic missiles obliterated fifty percent of Ukraine's power capacity. Speed and size and difficulty in inerception make ballistic missiles extremely effective weapons in Russia's arsenal, aiming at pulverizing infrastructure.

 

Over the Memorial Day weekend Ukraine's air defence forces were unable to intercept any of the nine ballistic missiles Russia launched from Saturday night to early Sunday. According to Ukraine's air defence forces, two of the Russian missiles were directed at Kyiv, where two Patriot units are stationed. The launch sites are in place, but the Patriot missiles are missing in action. Along with the ballistic missiles, Russia fired over 900 drones and 65 cruise missiles, representing some of the largest strikes of the war as Russia ramps up its attacks.

 

Despite the fact that Russian ballistic missiles can now deviate from their trajectory, Patriot systems are successfully intercepting them. One of the latest indicators is 6 out of 9 missiles intercepted   Espreso

Withholding any promises of additional military aid to Ukraine, U.S. President Trump condemned Russia for the attacks launched aganst Ukraine on Sunday. When President Trump wrote that Russian President Putin "has gone absolutely CRAZY!", Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, spoke of the comment as "connected to an emotional overload of everyone involved". If Ukraine desperately wants anything from the United States at this juncture, it is more Patriot missiles and launchers.

 

"Which, frankly, we don't have", responded Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Instead, according to Mr. Rubio, the United States is "encouraging" its allies in NATO to donate Patriot missiles and systems from their own stockpiles, adding that "not one of these countries want to give up their Patriot systems, either." The U.S. needs to keep a certain amount for its own defence, "in case of an attack from Iran or another adversary", confided an unidentified diplomat.

 

In strictly practical terms  under the new U.S. administration it is well understood by Ukrainian officials that the Trump administration would be prepared to sell them more Patriots, not as aid, but representing military sales. Washington, acording to a senior Ukrainian official is not expected to block the sale of future air defence systems, but the White House "will not give it away for free. They think like business people. If I give you something, you have to give me something in return. We have to adapt to this."

 

Russia, on the other hand, is not lacking support from its own allies, with North Korea supplying the Kremlin with some 250 ballistic missiles since last fall, acording to Ukraine's military intelligence. Russia used North Korean KN-23 missiles in six of nine ballistic attacks in May, including the massive Sunday attack on Ukraine. Germany was given permission by the Trump administration to re-export Patriot materials to Kyiv following the signing by Ukraine of a minerals deal with Washington.

 

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius informed reporters recently that his country would give Patriot missiles to Ukraine along with four IRIS-T systems, short-to-medium-range weapons, effective against cruise, but not ballistic missiles. Additionally, Berlin plans to send Ukraine its older PAC-2 Pariot missiles, not as effective as intercepting ballistic missiles, but useful, withal. Russian Iskander missiles were involved in dozens of civilians having beeen killed in attacks.

Ukraine cannot replace the Patriots for defending civilians against Russian ballistic attacks. Getty Images

"And this concerns questions like territorial integrity, security guarantees, the size and might of future armed forces in Ukraine, political sovereignty and choice of alliances."

"Putin could end this war today, if he wanted to, but we don't see any serious readiness on the Russian side to even engage in serious talks."

"All of what we see and the answers that the Russian president has given these past days and weeks is only more aggression and bloodshed and continuing the war."

"All of us want this war to end -- nobody more than the Ukrainians -- but it has to end in a way that brings true peace and not the next aggression."

German Ambassador to Canada Tjorven Bellmann

Conquest-Seeking, Death-Threatening Iran

"One of the prominent characteristics of this missile is its ability to evade radar detection and penetrate enemy air defence systems, thanks to its low radar signature."

"This missile has the capability to utilize various warheads for different missions."

Iranian Defence Minister General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani speaks in a press conference during the unveiling of a new surface-to-surface 4th generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile called Khaibar in Tehran, Iran, May 25, 2023. (credit: WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY) VIA REUTERS

"During a follow-up statement by Iran’s deputy defense minister for Logistics Mahdi Farhi, the official appeared to indicate this is a multi-stage missile, such that the warhead has its own guidance system and can reach high speeds and achieve greater accuracy. The official elaborated on claims that it is immune to electronic warfare, since it is not guided by satellites. He also elaborated on claims the warhead, that separates, has a low radar cross-section and that the missile can change direction during later stages of flight."

"Iran’s new test of a missile joins a long lineage of  testing and claims about new missiles. It frequently gives these missiles new names, even if they are very similar to previously known missiles, with some updates. Iran claims new abilities for these missiles, such as “pinpoint accuracy” and the ability to defeat air defenses." 

"Overall then, the new test of a missile should be seen in the context of Iran often claiming to test missiles with new capabilities during historic anniversaries and continuing to boast about them."

"Considering that Iran has exported missile technology to the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah; as well as sending actual missiles to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq; the missile threats must be taken seriously. The overall threat to countries like Israel is that these missiles have large warheads and may be part of the larger Iranian drive for weaponizing its nuclear program."

Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post 

So much for the nuclear talks that have taken years to negotiate off and on and which have accomplished precisely nothing. At no time during these negotiations between the US, EU and Tehran negotiators was there mention or allusion to rocketry meant to carry nuclear warheads. In the prolongation of the negotiations, Tehran essentially accomplished what it set out to do -- appear to take the concerns of the US and EU seriously, while earnestly negotiating in 'good faith', endlessly extending the talks and using the extended time to get on with its ballistic missile program.

 

At the very same time that it continued to enrich uranium much beyond its agreed-to limit, even while its experiments in the creation of nuclear fissile material and the production of nuclear heads to fit on the missiles commenced apace. Taking steps all the while to create deep underground bunkers to house its production laboratories at a depth that would be immune to surface bombing. Pre-emptive bombing that might conceivably be carried out by the very Middle East country that Tehran has stated time and again it has plans to annihilate with the use of nuclear bombs.

The latest iteration of its liquid-fuelled Khorramshahr ballistic missile at a time of ongoing, deep tensions with the West and certainly with Israel, and to a lesser degree the Sunni-Islamic countries it plans to dominate into submission with the threat of its attainment of the means to destroy them as well as Israel, is telling enough. The technologically advanced boasts themselves are a form of terrorism it employs to ensure its adversaries in the region are kept in check. Iran's recent detente with Saudi Arabia, its closest adversary next to Israel is no guarantee that the Saudi oilfields will not be attacked again by Iran's proxy Houthis in Yemen.

The Khorramshahr-4 was placed on proud display in Tehran, the missile on a truck-mounted launcher. A missile that Iran's defence minister assured those present, including journalists, that launch could be prepared within a short period. Poised and ready-to-go. The missile described with a 2,000-kilometre range, and a 1,500 kilogram warhead. Undated video footage was released which purportedly showed the missile during a successful launch.

Of Iran's ballistic missile fleet, the Khorramshahr possesses the heaviest payload which may have been designed to keep the weapon under a 2,000km range limit, some analysts feel. Placing most of the Mideast in its range, and falling just short of Western Europe. Named after an Iranian city where heavy fighting took place between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, there is much symbolism in naming the missile Khorramshahr. Just as the missile, called Kheibar is heavily symbolically named in reference to the 7th century Jewish fortress that fell to Islamic conquest within an area where Saudi Arabia now sits.

 

In staging that is a continuum of symbolism, so heavily employed by Tehran, a miniature of Jerusalem's golden Dome of the Rock sitting on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound which squats on a much earlier Judaic sacred site of the two iterations of the Temple of Solomon, the Temple Mount, was placed next to the mobile missile launcher.

 

Viewing Israel as its arch-enemy, Tehran has been actively and visibly inciting to violence the terrorist groups that are its proxies; Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, along with the Gaza-governing Hamas, all of whom were created for the express purpose of destroying the presence of a Jewish state on a geography that Islam conquered and where land sacrosanct to Islam theologically considers the presence of another religion forbidden. 

That the geography in question is historically linked to Judaism, and Israel is located on part of its ancestral homeland, is entirely irrelevant to fundamentalist Islamic states who regard the presence of a Jewish state to represent an assault on Islam itself. The inexhaustible supply of weaponry emanating from Iran to supply terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza is an assurance that peace will not come easily to the region. 

It is a region, moreover, that has always been and likely always will be at war with itself. Without the presence of Israel in their midst, the tribal and sectarian violence that destroyed Lebanon and led to the deaths of a half-million Syrians would still fester and carry on. Groups like the Islamic State will always surface to create deadly chaos, creating bloodbaths between Muslims and victimizing minority religious and ethnic groups deprived of their human rights. 

The new Khorramshahr with its updated technology would be capable of reaching Israel from Iran. But then, when Iraq was invaded by a Western alliance after its sweep into and claim of Kuwait as Iraqi territory, missiles were sent by Saddam Hussein into Israel at that time, too. The uneasy tensions between Iran and Israel have mounted steadily of late, with Iran's threats of destroying Israel, giving the Jewish State good reason to destroy Iran's nuclear program before it has a chance to deploy.

 

A new surface-to-surface 4th generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile called Khaibar with a range of 2,000 km is launched at an undisclosed location in Iran, in this picture obtained on May 25, 2023.

(photo credit: IRANIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/WANA/VIA REUTERS)

 

 

 

Mutual Koreas Sabre-Rattling

Kim Yo-jong issued warnings to S.Korea  Getty

"[Pyongyang would destroy major targets in Seoul should South Korea take any] dangerous military action [such as a pre-emptive strike]."

"Pyongyang opposes war], But if South Korea, for any reason -- whether or not it is blinded by misjudgement -- opts for such military actions as 'pre-emptive strike' touted by [Suh Wook], the situation will change."

"In that case, South Korea itself will become a target."

"In case South Korea opts for military confrontation with us, our nuclear combat force will have to inevitably carry out its duty."

Kim Yo-jong, senior official in North Korea's government 

"Yoon's 'pre-emptive strike' comment made the headlines a few months ago, and Pyongyang is seizing Suh's remarks to make a point to the incoming South Korean administration."

"North Korea has thus far refrained from criticizing Yoon at any authoritative level, but it certainly seems to be laying the groundwork for it."

Rachel Min-young Lee, analyst, 38 North project, United States

On Friday, South Korean Defence Minister Suh Wook had stated that his country's military possessed a variety of missiles whose range had been significantly updated, with greater accuracy and power and "the ability to accurately and quickly hit any target in North Korea". A surprisingly candid and extremely provocative statement, not one to be casually remarked upon with the expectation that there would be no response amounting to a none-too-casual threat from North Korea.

 

Ms Kim is often believed to be the “number two” of the North Korean leadership.  Getty Images

 

That response came courtesy of the sister of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un who possesses a good degree of authority within the regime of the irascible leader. Analysts read Ms.Kim's response as a veiled message whose recipient-target would most likely be the incoming conservative president of South Korea. Displays of military strength on the part of both Koreas have increased following the test-firing by North Korea of a range of increasingly powerful missiles in 2022 alone.

Incoming South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has called for a more muscular defence against threats issued by North Korea. In return the statements issued by Kim may indicate that Pyongyang is in the process of preparing the country's population for a planned shift in direction of inter-Korean relations, with the near prospect of Yoon taking office in May.

Meeting with American officials in Washington this week, a delegation from Yoon's team was welcomed, with American officials reiterating assurance of the U.S. commitment to the defence of South Korea, outlined in a statement by the U.S. State Department. How reassuring that might be to South Korea with Beijing comfortably taking authority in the area and North Korea being seen as a protege of Beijing, is anyone's guess. 

 

All the more so as Washington's pledges to its allies have not quite matched its actions of late.

North Korea claimed it had fired multiple missiles in March, which the US said was a test for parts of an ICBM system   Getty Images

North Korea's Decade With Baby Dictator

"All people and soldiers should have absolute trust in the general secretary, have their fate and future completely entrusted to him and guard his safety and authority."

"He is, indeed, the greatest man and the great sage of the revolution all the people on this land follow with their deep affection and sincerity."

State Rodong Sinmun newspaper

"He has tried to differentiate himself from the reigns of his father and grandfather. [Including] legitimizing his own leadership by establishing an ideological system of 'Kim Jong-unism'[ that is centered on 'Our People First' 'Our Nation First' and self-reliance."

"At the same time, he has been using the same old brutal playbook to maintain power and control over officials."

Duyeon Kim, adjunct senior fellow, Centre for a New American Security, Washington, D.C.

"To a certain extent, he [has] ruled by fear, as we saw from Jang's brutal execution, and the unusually frequent personnel shuffles in the top echelons of the military in the first few years of his leadership."

"[He is] backed up by a powerful system that has withstood all sorts of storms since the founding of North Korea."

"It also has to do with a clever leadership strategy. This is a man who values pragmatism and understands the importance of keeping up with the times to stay competitive and improve the people's living standards."

Minyoung Lee, Seoul-based non-resident fellow, 38 North Program, Stimson Centre, Washington

Citizens visit the bronze statues of their late leaders Kim Il Sung, left, and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, on the occasion of 10th anniversary of demise of Kim Jong Il.  VOA

 

The tenth anniversary of the death of North Korean former leader Kim Jong-il saw a ceremonial service where thousands of people paid their respects to the former leader, with his son Kim Jong Un in attendance. Footage televised by KCTV showed Kim visiting his father's mausoleum, standing on a platform with crowds of people below, on the palace grounds in Pyongyang.

 

Flags at half mast, the thousands gathered at the annual memorial bowed silent heads, portraits of the country's former leaders, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung facing them. A ten-day period of remembrance for the "Great Leader" was officially ordered, a ban on alcohol, on laughter, on any overt signs of happiness ordered. Police ordered to look for signs of disobedience to the ban and to arrest any that dared to contravene the ban. Involuntary smiles to be suppressed on pain of incarceration.

The occasion of the tenth year since the death of the former leader of North Korea also marks the tenth year of the ascension of his son, Kim Jong Un who assumed the post of supreme leader at age 29 on his father's sudden death of a heart attack. Kim appears to have met all the yardsticks and then some of strong leadership, North Korean-style. Presenting himself as a brutal oppressor, a ruthless tyrant, but a loving dictator to his people.

The internal palace intrigues have presented no problem to this scheming tyrant who hasn't hesitated to order the murder of anyone who he believed to have challenged his authority or nurse aspirations to take his place. He has achieved some milestones beyond what his father and grandfather managed in meeting with a U.S. president, with the president of South Korea, and establishing a personal relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Loving his people so deeply he defied international sanctions in his ongoing bid to develop nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. That the expense involved in these enterprises meant that much of his population lives in poverty and episodes of food and energy scarcity erupt time and again does not appear to give him sleepless nights. 

This loving supreme leader ordered the imprisonment and then the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek who, with his wife, had avuncularly taken the young Kim under his wing as he ascended to the leadership, guiding and encouraging  him, before he became strangely persona non grata when Kim appeared to view him as an adversarial threat. 

Even his half-brother Kim Jong-nam was not immune to suspicion as a possible usurper of Kim's place as supreme leader. So a rather awkward and amateurish plot to assassinate him with the lethal VX nerve agent was carried out in 2017. Academics studying his regime of 'benevolent' dictatorship give him credit for modernizing state television programming, for introducing economic reforms, and for inclusion in his speeches of the 'people'.

North Korea continues to be a hermit kingdom, one engrossed in building a nuclear stockpile, catering to the neuroses and paranoia of a man fascinated by military weapons of mass destruction and seeing no reason whatever why his impoverished nation should possess such weapons to prove to the world what a global power it represents. While during the pandemic the nation's rudimentary health care system is close to buckling.

 

KCNA

Testing the Bounds of International Patience

"Downplaying North Korean ballistic missile tests will not help U.S. diplomacy with North Korea in any way, and would only encourage North Korea to further test the bounds of what the new administration can accept."

Markus Garlauskas, senior fellow, Atlantic Council; former U.S. National Intelligence Officer for North Korea

"Every day that passes without a deal that tries to reduce the risks posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile arsenal is a day that it gets bigger and badder."

Vipin Narang, nuclear affairs expert, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"We are consulting with our allies and partners, and there will be responses. If they choose to escalate, we will respond accordingly."

"But I'm also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization."

U.S. President Joe Biden

An electronics shop in Seoul displays television screens showing a news program reporting about North Korea's missiles with file images. North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Like an errant juvenile delinquent who enjoys being regarded as a social deviant, North Korea's unpredictable leader Kim Jong Un enjoys what he interprets as celebrity notice by the global community through his provocative and dangerous displays of military prowess with the use of technologically advanced missiles and hinting that it would be simple enough for his technicians to mount a miniaturized nuclear warhead on any of his latest, more advanced, more powerful, longer-range ballistic missiles.

He hungers to be recognized as the leader of a powerful, influential country, piggy-backing his notoriety on to China's fearsome new and growing naval power and global influence. The alarm that Kim Jong Un causes his uneasy neighbours is second only to that of China's in claiming extraterritorial sites as China's exclusively, ranging from disputed land, sea and air borders to international areas not in dispute and held to be open to all.

After launching two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan at a time when Japan is launching its preliminaries to the Olympic Games this summer, it is clear that Kim is bored, awaiting notice from the new U.S. administration, and taking deliberate action to pry the attention of the new Biden administration away from cold-war-era-returned disputes with China and Russia to North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is shown attending a ceremony to inaugurate the start of a construction project in Pyongyang, in a photo released Wednesday by the country's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). (KCNA/Reuters)

The missiles' launch flaunted North Korea's impressive technological advances in weapons and rocketry as it continues to recklessly defy and provoke the patience of its neighbours and that of the United States involved in protecting the sovereign rights of those neighbours and which Pyongyang interprets as posing a military threat to itself. A threat that Kim feels can be countered with more advanced weaponry to persuade the United States to walk on eggs around North Korea.

According to analysts, the missile tests need not be conflated with the belief that talks on denuclearization are spinning in circles awaiting their final gasp of rejection. The North Korean arsenal, experts warn the U.S. administration, is a clear demonstration that Pyongyang is advancing its military arsenal's effectiveness. In itself a new threat to stability in the region. As greater scrutiny is being fixed on the North Korean arsenal Kim basks happily in what he construes as fear and admiration.

Several days earlier North Korea had fired a number of cruise missiles. President Biden responded sounding unperturbed claiming no message was intended other than a friendly greeting; and did not in the least bit portend future problems, but was merely, for North Korea, "business as usual". There can be little doubt that Kim is feeling his oats, having been approached by the U.S.to think deeply on issues of human rights, sanctions and denuclearization.

 

All of which the North Korean leader was pleased to rebuff. Along with shoving aside Biden administration overtures with a diplomatic mission to re-establish denuclearization talks putting an end to tactical mission provocations. 

"If the US continues with its thoughtless remarks without thinking of the consequences, it may be faced with something that is not good."

"It is a gangster-like logic that it is allowable for the US to ship the strategic nuclear assets into the Korean peninsula and launch ICBMs any time it wants but not allowable for the DPRK, its belligerent party, to conduct even a test of a tactical weapon."

"[North Korea has the] right to self-defense [and the Biden administration] took the wrong first step."

North Korean military official Ri Pyong Chol

Commuters watch a TV showing a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Joe Biden during a news program at the Suseo Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday

AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

                                                                                                                                                             

Fool Me Once, Shame on You: Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

"To secure transparency on the suspension of nuclear tests, we will close the republic's northern nuclear test site."
"[A] great victory [has been attained in the nation's official] 'byungjin' [policy line; pursuing economic and nuclear development in synchronicity]." 
"Nuclear development has proceeded scientifically and in due order and the development of the delivery strike means also proceeded scientifically and verified the completion of nuclear weapons."
"We no longer need any nuclear test or test launches of international and intercontinental range ballistic missiles and because of this the northern nuclear test site has finished its mission."Statement, Korean Workers' Party's Central Committee

"There is nothing in North Korea's statement that signals a willingness to give up their nukes."
"On the contrary, the tone of the message is one of confidence and strength."
Benjamin Silberstein, North Korea researcher, University of Pennsylvania

Attendees at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea  Credit: Reuters

There, it's done -- the long-awaited announcement made after a meeting of North Korea's full Central Committee, focusing on its "new stage" of policies and national directions. The committee saw fit to unanimously resolve to concentrate its national efforts to consolidate a strong socialist economy for the purpose of embarking on "groundbreaking improvements in people's lives". So, it is clear after all that the Kin dynasty is not heartlessly oblivious to the plight of its starving people, envisioning a glorious future of strong economic and social growth.

Of course that future could have been achievable in the past, had it laid aside its commitment to its communist-era pledge and aligned itself with its South Korean cousins who have long since achieved pride in self-sufficiency that it created as an Asian Tiger of stellar technological achievement and production reaching into international corridors of trade and becoming wealthy in the process; the South's robust economy a stark contrast to the North's.

The South has demonstrated incalculable patience with its wayward cousin to the North where -- despite being constantly threatened, suffering violence and loss of life at the vicious whims of Jim Jong Un, putting the South to the test -- it now hopes to usher in a new era, convincing Kim there is nothing to fear from its neighbours, much less the United States, and everything to gain.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in claims Kim's expression of interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons is genuine, that they plan to meet to discuss this and other areas of common interest in Panmunjom during a summit to resolve the standoff with Pyongyang. Sadly, North Korea's idea of "denuclearization" fails to accord with the American definition; it is an issue that remains live; nuclear development to resume unless Washington removes its troops from the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong Un's view of himself as a supreme leader, one whose prestige and power resides in his ability to bellicosely threaten his perceived enemies teeters on the brink of acceding to the demands of those enemies, and it just simply does not appear to jive with the former commitment into which so much treasury and effort has been poured. Still, there are those who find the newer statements of accommodation believable.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington is certainly one among them, taking comfort that North Korea is signalling it is prepared to freeze its program; a significant first step -- with others equally welcome -- to follow, they would like to believe, despite past such episodes being turned upside down and inside out, as examples of what can go wrong.

North Korean launching of the Hwasong-15 missile which is capable of reaching all parts of the US in November 2017 Credit: AFP/ KCNA VIA KNS

The Innocent Intent of Iran

"Today, some of those states—especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, as a result of their expensive lobbying campaigns, the U.S.—claim Iran is interfering in Arab affairs and spreading insecurity throughout the region. Ironically, though, it is they who have waged war on their fellow Arab nation of Yemen, invaded Bahrain, embargoed their kin in Qatar, funded and armed terror groups in the war in Syria, and supported a military coup against an elected government in Egypt, all the while denying the most basic freedoms to their own restless populations. Iran, meanwhile, being stronger and older as an independent state than any of its neighbors, has not attacked another country in nearly three centuries. Iran doesn’t and won’t interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors."
"Still, Arab affairs are Iran’s business. And we are not shy in admitting that non-Arab affairs are their business. How can they not be? We share borders, waters, and resources; we fly through each other’s airspace. We can’t not be interested in how our neighbors affect the part of the globe where we make our homes." 
"Our interest in our region’s affairs, though, is not malevolent. On the contrary, it is in the interest of stability. We do not desire the downfall of any regimes in the countries that surround us. Our desire—in principle and practice—is that all the nations of the region enjoy security, peace, and stability. Unfortunately, this is not the desire of some of some of our neighbors, whose untried leaders cherish the delusion of regime change in Iran, and support terrorist groups that seek to overthrow our government or create fear for the sake of wounding the nation. Our neighbors do this even while saying that Iran’s influence is spreading—especially since the conclusion of the nuclear agreement of 2015."
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif -- The Atlantic

"There is no need for a sustained intelligence effort to expose the blatant lies in Zarif’s piece, so I will highlight just a few of the most egregious examples: Iran didn’t improve the accuracy of its missiles to avoid “civilian or non-combatant deaths” (I admit I had to read that sentence twice to believe he wrote it), but rather to intensify the threat and ability to sow destruction. Iran is not a democracy, as he portrays it, because a democracy doesn’t hang homosexuals from cranes, doesn’t enshrine in law the right to stone adulterers to death, and doesn’t maintain a force like the Basij, an Iranian paramilitary of around 11.5 million people whose role is to enforce Sharia law and prevent Western influence. Iran isn’t the victim of terror as Zarif pretends, but the country that funds and arms Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a long list of other terror organizations. Iran does not show “good will and peaceful intentions,” because if it did it wouldn’t have sent the Revolutionary Guard to help the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad murder more than half a million people in Syria and create over 11 million refugees through the use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons. Iran is not interested in the “promotion of peace, stability, progress, and prosperity in the region” because earlier this year Zarif’s boss, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called Israel “a cancerous tumor” and a “fake entity” which needs to be destroyed. On another occasion he announced that Iran will support anyone who aims to “wipe Israel off the map."
Israeli Lawmaker Yair Lapid -- The Atlantic

Yair Lapid, (right) head of the Yesh Atid party, and Javad Zarif, (left) Iran's minister of foreign affairs.  
Ilmars Znotins / Stringer / Getty / Ariel Schalit / AP / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

Iran portrays itself as no threat to any country either in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world. The Middle East has been made more volatile by Iran's interference in other countries' affairs in its single-minded drive to establish itself as the premier player in the region, with its implied threat of nuclear devices and advanced missile technology, with its working partnership with the eminently irascible, paranoid North Korea and its similar agenda. Its not-so-subtle actions, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, belie that description of a non-interfering, peaceful nation.

From the time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard al-Quds force established a beachhead in Lebanon in 1983 to train, arm and influence a proxy militia later known as Hezbollah, Iran has never looked back on its former peaceful coexistence with its neighbours. Before then it had announced its new sectarian belligerence with its attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. With furious intent Iran has since then tasked its military engineers to produce technologically advanced weaponry with which to challenge the 'Zionist Entity' and the 'Great Satan'.

Bombs called "explosively-formed penetrators" which Iran equipped its proxy Shia militias with penetrated the best armored vehicles the U.S. military deployed during the Iraq occupation. In 2007 the U.S. administration designated the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as terrorists at the very time that some Washington officials mused about military strikes on Tehran's nuclear program. That same year wearing U.S. uniforms militiamen in a convoy of SUVs similar to those of U.S. troops and contractors, a Shia militia entered Karbala and targeted Americans to kidnap and kill five soldiers.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in a military parade marking the 36th anniversary of Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran, in front of the shrine of late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, on Sept. 21, 2016.

They are bold, skilled and well-equipped as adversaries to the largest, most technologically advanced military in the world. It is a matter of high speculation how each country would fare if direct conflict erupted between them, with IRGC commanders warning of the vulnerability of American Middle East installations within 1,250 miles of Iran's borders, representing the range of conventional missiles Tehran could deploy.

This would be a last-choice, worst-case scenario as far as Iran is concerned; a direct hit on Tehran in an inevitable response would not much please Iranian ayatollahs who far prefer conflict to take place on soil other than theirs and this is where asymmetrical warfare comes in handy, where Iranian-linked militias could strike using weapons less advanced, but not as readily traceable to Iran. There are ample U.S. targets can could be struck, as they have been in the past with little but suspected links to Iran.

Iran's influence has grown in the past several years and can now boast greater numbers of militias as allies under their direction resulting from regional alliances grown broader and deeper, including foreign groups. Only lately has it been revealed that al-Qaeda, despite its Sunni heritage, has links with Shiite Iran. Saudi Arabia may have been responsible in large part through its Wahhabist investment for the formation of al-Qaeda, but it was also targeted by Osama bin Laden for its links to the U.S.

Tens of thousands of militiamen, trained and advised by Ira, represent part of the Popular Mobilization Forces whose creation was ostensibly for the purpose of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, itself furiously anti-Shiite. These are the same PMF Shiite militias confronting Kurdish Peshmerga forces, all part of Iran's proxy regional war architecture with the end game of achieving regional superpower status in its conquest reach-out through cunning strategic gamesmanship.

Iran is involved in destabilizing its neighbours and threatening rivals with the indirect attacks at its disposal led by groups it controls -- through threats of sabotage, terrorism and proxy warfare. Its reach into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, not to mention Yemen and Bahrain support its hypersectarian politics. State-orchestrated violence and terrorist actions are a specialty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The weaknesses of its Arab neighbours leave it in a commanding position.The usual Arab squabbling among various countries in the region weaken cohesion and open vacuums that Iran is only too happy to utilize to its own undisguised purposes.

Iranian Republic Islamic Broadcasting (IRIB) shows a Khoramshahr missile being launched from an undisclosed location on Sept. 23, a day after the missile was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran

North Korean Provocations

"[Pyongyang's missile launch represents] a clear and sharp military escalation."
"Their actions are quickly closing off the possibility of a diplomatic solution."
Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador, United Nations

"[Kim Jong-un] feasted his eyes [on the missile, grinning and punching the air, celebrating] a gift to the American bastards."
"[The missile, he claimed] was handsome as a good-looking boy [representing the] final step [urging North Korea's scientists to keep right on sending] gift packages to the Yankees. [North Korea would continue to] demonstrate its mettle to the U.S. [never to negotiate its nuclear weapons aspirations]."
North Korean state new agency

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reacts with scientists and technicians of the DPRK Academy of Defence Science after the test-launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14. KCNA/via REUTERS

"The [U.S.] administration can give them [China] a choice: Do business with North Korea or have access to the U.S. financial system."
Anthony Ruggiero, North Korea expert, Foundation for the Defence of Democracies

China fears and hugely resents an American presence in their geography. For that reason alone it resists increasing economic pressure on its neighbour, envisioning the potential of a collapse bringing millions of desperate North Koreans seeking opportunities across their border. And the prospect of the two Koreas, North and South, re-amalgamating into one unit under the aegis of the United States represents another dreaded scenario to Communist China. American interference in its bailiwick complicates and threatens China's hegemonic regional power play.

So U.S. President Donald Trump who enjoyed an amicable meeting with China's President Xi Jinping in April, declaring the Chinese president his new friend, a reliable and willing ally with the United States against North Korean aspirations to achieve nuclear miniaturization and intercontinental ballistic missile power-of-threat, had a reprieve of a few months, basking in the understanding that China would exert its influence on its wayward neighbour. Unfortunately, the wayward neighbour listens to no outside source.

The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 is seen during its test. Experts say a reliable nuclear-tipped ICBM would require a small warhead to fit a long-range missile, technology to protect against intense heat as it re-enters the atmosphere, separate the warhead and guide it to its target.KCNA/via REUTERS

And China also happened to increase its trade with North Korea in the last several months, belying its declared agreement that more of an effort to isolate and to challenge North Korea's aspirations would be undertaken in the interests of world stability -- and keeping the United States away from closer proximity to China. So now that President Trump is disabused of the quaint notion that President Xi is firmly in his corner, he has turned to countries employing migrant North Koreans whose wages are returned to their country of origin.

"Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 percent in the first quarter. So much for China working with us -- but we had to give it a try!", he groused on Twitter. Give him credit for that; he did give it a try. Now, even Egypt has been urged to "stop hosting North Korean guest workers, and stop providing economic or military benefits to North Korea". Then there's also that little item whereby North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are singing from the same hymnal, with one supporting the other.

And just incidentally, exchanging technical expertise and nuclear and missile scientists. A marriage made in deepest Hades.

The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 is seen during its test launch in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency. KCNA/via REUTERS

State Terrorism in North Korea

"His neurological condition can be best described as a state of unresponsive wakefulness."
"He showed no signs of understanding language, responding to verbal commands or awareness of his surroundings. He had not spoken ... or engaged in any purposeful movements or behaviours."
"...This study showed extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of the brain."
Dr. Daniel Kanter, neurologist, University of Cincinnati Medical Center

"Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea..."
"The use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Starvation and other inhumane conditions of detention are deliberately imposed on suspects. Persons who are found to have engaged in major political crimes are 'disappeared', without trial or judicial order, to political prison camps [kwanliso] ... Their families are not even informed of their fate if they die."
"The inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide. The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades. The unspeakable atrocities that are being committed against inmates of the kwanliso political prison camps resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian states established during the twentieth century."
United Nations commission report, 2014

The May launch followed two successful tests of medium- to long-range missiles in as many weeks by Pyongyang Credit: Korean Central News Agency

The family of American university student Otto Warmbier was well aware that their son was in a North Korean prison. What they did not know was that their 22-year-old son, who had briefly visited North Korea along with a group of other 'tourists' through an arranged tour group and was detained as they all were in the process of returning home -- had been in a deep, unresponsive coma for the year he was held incommunicado, accused of being a spy.

Otto Warmbier's parents were briefly reunited with their son when the U.S. administration somehow managed to convince North Korean authorities to release the  young man, to allow him to return home on compassionate grounds. That reunion was brief because the young man, despite the best medical care available in the United States, was on a trajectory to death that was unstoppable. Mere days after returning home his life ebbed away, and his parents were left to arrange for his funeral.

While travelling in China in 2015 he had decided with the curiosity of the young to have a different kind of adventure, to sign on to a four-day tour to North Korea to celebrate the New Year of 2016. As the tour group prepared to depart from Pyongyang International Airport on January 2nd, one of their number, Otto Warmbier, alone among the group was detained. He appeared again in public filmed on North Korean television two months afterward, to 'confess' to having attempted to take a propaganda poster home with him.

He was sentenced, for that dread offence, to 15 years of hard labour at one of North Korea's notoriously brutal political labour camps. Clearly, he was interrogated. And obviously during his interrogation he was subjected to torture; at the very least the kind of manhandling that resulted in bringing him perilously close to death. The after-effect of that interrogation and brutalization was a young man in a state of suspended animation for a full year. In which state he remained to the end.

In totalitarian, brutal governments control of the population is absolute. Citizens have no recourse to justice, to the law, to state protection. Anyone unfortunate enough as a foreign visitor or resident in the country can be assured that the treatment meted out to them if they arouse suspicion regarding their motivation to peruse an embattled population out of curiosity, and come away with a memento will be similar to that of a resident-citizen. Once in the clutches of the military and the prison guards there is no exit.

This reality represents one of the reasons why the International Criminal Court exists; to bring to justice those leaders of nations whose administration of their country's affairs is beyond doubt brutal, violent and unjust. Recently there was a gathering at the United Nations to activate the international crime of aggression as a prosecutable crime. Like the earlier "responsibility to protect" United Nations internationally recognized law approved by all, but allowed to languish without a response when a country like Syria saw its president horrifically abusing his population, this law too will make everyone feel good, but produce no results.

The International Criminal Court, after all, sat in judgement of Sudan's president, declaring him a war criminal for his planned and executed atrocities against black Sudanese Darfurians. Yet Omar al-Bashir remains in his post as Sudan's leader, travels with impunity to Arab League meetings, where he is untouchable; there are none who will arrest  him and deliver him to the ICC. In the case of North Korea, China sees its current leadership as a nuisance and worrisome, but preferable as a bulwark against Western interests moving snugly beyond South Korea.

As for reunification, South Korea itself is fairly well at odds with itself; on the one hand valuing the prospect of reunification, on the other shying away from its wealthy 50 million population having to absorb an impoverished 25 million North Koreans. Germany took on a heavy burden when the Berlin Wall fell, and reunification between East and West took place; the current and long-serving Chancellor of Germany is a product of Sovietized East Germany.

The regime of Kim Jong-un has no credible opponents for whom the possibility of mounting a rebellion might become reality. The state apparatus of a maliciously powerful military might aligned against the plight of the oppressed ensures that no insurrection could possibly take place without the insurgents being mercilessly slaughtered, leaving the Republic with fewer enemies-of-the-state to incarcerate, torture and kill.

WannaCry?

"We believe it's important that other researchers around the world investigate these similarities and attempt to discover more facts about the origin of WannaCry."
"The scale of the Lazarus operations is shocking."
Kaspersky Internet security (Russian multinational cybersecurity) Moscow

An employee works at the Moscow headquarters of Kaspersky Labs, which specializes in antivirus and internet security software [Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters]

"We are not aware if payments have led to any data recovery."
"This was not a tool developed by the NSA to hold ransom data. This was a tool developed by culpable parties, potentially criminals or foreign nation-states, that were put together in such a way as to deliver phishing emails, put it into embedded documents, and cause infection, encryption and locking." 
Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert

There's an inspirational, or is it aspirational, linkage. A Russian and an American-based cybersecurity firm each appear to have concluded through their analysis that there are unmistakable clues linking the current wide-ranging "ransomware" attack on worldwide computers to a gang of cybercriminals they feel could be the signature cyberwar statement of the Peoples Republic of North Korea. If so, this is North Korea at its most ambitious; responding to the new South Korean government's tentative overture and the more strident attitude of the United States toward its dangerous mischief.

Not only is North Korea's Dear Little Leader determined to keep on firing off those Ballistic Missiles while indulging in faster, farther distances, dangling the prospect of more advanced nuclear tests on the way to perfecting a neatly powerful little warhead of the nuclear variety on what is fast becoming an arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, but indulging in the joy of perturbing the international community through mischief of an Internet-disruptive score, putting all manner of public and private interests temporarily out of commission.

But it seems that North Korean hackers simply took advantage of a tool developed elsewhere for the opposite purpose. Having accessed that tool, they simply re-purposed it to better reflect their own goal, transforming an American-security advanced tool into a North Korean formula to extract funding from agencies desperate to have their data and functionality restored so they could return to normal. Researchers appear to have linked a hacking tool originating with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that had been linked online to the current broad WannaCry attack.

Computer security experts have linked code in the WannaCry ransomware software to North Korea

Ransoming the ability of the world community to manage its resources and infrastructure and vital services, while threatening to obliterate its capacities and record-maintenance. Suddenly Kaspersky, always under suspicion in the West for its ties to the Kremlin, is handing out sage advice worldwide. Of course, this is what a global cybersecurity company is meant to do in any event, so it is merely living up to its billing. Alongside Symantec, no less.

Similarities in coding between an earlier version of WannaCry and a 2014 cyber attack from the Lazarus Group has clues both Symantec and Kaspersky  link to the identity behind this most recent cyber attack. South Korea knows all about the dauntingly disabling effects of such a strike; it experienced no less of an Internet immobilization  in 2014 with the "DarkSeoul" operation shutting down all its infrastructure. And a $81-million cyber robbery of a Bangladeshi bank further distinguished the capability of the dark forces of cyberattacks.

The Lazarus Group operation is running a "malware factory", notes Kaspersky darkly of the North Korean state actor. Thousands of additional computers fell prey to the WannaCry attack with the resumption of week-day business, affecting hospitals, businesses, schools and daily life in over a hundred countries. Computers were paralyzed in factory, bank, government agency and transport systems operations in Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, India and Japan among many others.

Experts have linked WannaCry to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean operation Credit: Bloomberg

Throughout Asia, thousands of new attacks were reported with 600 locations in Japan affected as Hitachi and Nissan Motors reported problems, while in China almost 30,000 institutions were infected through hundreds of thousands of electronic operating devices. Universities with their older computers and slow updating of operating systems and security were particularly hard hit, according to Fang Xingdong, ChinaLabs founder. And Russia too was particularly hard hit by this noxious malware.

Is there any especial irony in the fact that North Korea's only 'friend' and support has also been hit indiscriminately? China will no doubt have much to discuss with its North Korean protectorate in the near future. Even Vladimir Putin may have much to say to Pyongyang, since its most recent rocket test was an especially powerful one, plunging into the sea off the Russian coast, after ascending higher than any of its previous little surprises.

"I want to confirm that we are categorically against the expansion of the club of nuclear powers, including with the Korean Peninsula and North Korea."
"But at the same time, we understand that what we have observed in the world recently, and specifically flagrant violations of international law and incursions into the territory of foreign states, changes in regime, lead to such kinds of arms races."
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin

Oh dear, Mr. Putin! Violations of internal law and incursions into the territory of foreign states, you say?