1/19/2007
Crossfire War – Tehran – Pyongyang Watch – North East Asia Theatre: Tehran – Pyongyang/moscow – Berlin – Taipei – Jakarta – Canberra – Singapore – Delhi – Seoul – Ulaanbaatar – Tokyo – Washington; Iran Deputy Foreign Minister Meets Senior N. Korea Official – Attempt to Procure More Ballistic – Nuclear Weaponry
Night Watch: PYONGYANG – Tehran has rushed its Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia-Pacific Affairs Mehdi Safari to Pyongyang in an extremely, last minute, desperate attempt to procure what will probably be the last shipment of ballistic missile – nuclear technology from North Korea. Both governments are aware the Allies are now making serious efforts to intercept North Korean shipments since its nuclear bomb test in October. Late last year the French intercepted a North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean. By no means is Safari in North Korea for the cultural purposes Tehran has officially announced as their reason for sending him. Safari is meeting with Pyongyang’s No. 2 leading official, Kim Yong-Nam, the Chairman of the North Korea Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. [IRNA]
It was on Nov. 26, 2005, when crossfirewar.com reported that Tehran was offering Pyongyang free oil and gas in exchange for nuclear technology. Of course the offer was accepted and with the complete support of Beijing since China knows that if Iran is militarily successful, some of Beijing’s rivals will be weakened, the West-Russia-India-Japan. Two years ago North Korea was still in effect one of China’s provinces as it had been since the Cold War ended in 1990 and the Soviet Union withdrew removing most of its financial support.
North Korea then became one of the most consistent exporters of advanced weaponry to Iran, which had revived their nuclear program in 1987. Nuclear warheads for Iran’s Shahab missile program has probably been the main weapon produced under the guidance of Russian scientists that went south when the Cold War ended working alongside Chinese technicians and in underground facilities constructed by the same San Fransisco based engineering firm that built the nuclear bomb proof underground facilities for Saudi Arabia during the 1980s. The news would show them during the Gulf War and the day after the war ended, in February 1991, CNN showed the firm’s London branch office invited to Iran. Tehran went through London to circumvent Washington’s embargo.
The world is obviously about to see how accurate the missiles are and fortunately nothing works as well as advertised, however new the warhead and guidance systems are, prone to mal-functions. Some will miss and others will be duds. Even a conventional bomb can be a dud and they can also miss. When North Korea exploded its nuclear bomb last October Moscow received a special envoy from Beijing and probably told him that Moscow will re-establish its presence in North Korea relieving Beijing of any further economic responsiblity. A diplomatic way of saying China will lose a lot of its enormous economic contact with Russia if Beijing continues to advise Pyongyang on its program and its exports. With China fragmenting, due to enormous corruption and on a greater scale than even before 1949, Beijing was in no position to refuse and has since been showing Mongolia’s head of state some of China’s provinces.
But in the meantime, until this war against Iran is over in about a year, the Allies will have to increase their effort of intercepting North Korean ships or any other merchant ships carrying advanced weaponry to Iran or perhaps even to North African governments cooperating with Tehran with Cairo – under Mubarak being the only exception. It is also quite possible Moscow-Washington have planned a joint strike against North Korea’s remaining nuclear – ballistic facilities. In late October the Chairman of the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff – Pentagon General Peter Pace spent four days in Russia. As a result of his working – tactical planning visit, the Pentagon has transferred F-117 Stealth fighters to South Korea.
www.crossfirewar.com
