North Korea’s list of close partners keeps shrinking. After the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024, Iran became North Korea’s sole ally in the Middle East. Now, after the US-Israel strikes on Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, it appears that even that once close-knit relationship is on the fritz.
The Iran crisis will reinforce the belief that nuclear arms are the ultimate guarantor of regime survival. The fate of non-nuclear “rogue” states under US military pressure serves as a cautionary tale for Kim Jong Un.
A vindicated North Korean nuclear posture could carry real implications for the US-South Korea alliance. Kim will likely double down on expanding and refining his nuclear and missile capabilities rather than entertain diplomatic talks with the United States. Such a move, in turn, could intensify pressure on the US government to demonstrate the credibility of extended deterrence in visible and tangible ways. It may also reignite debate in Seoul about whether reliance on the US nuclear umbrella is sufficient over the long term.
At the very least, the Iran crisis will harden North Korea’s conviction that nuclear weapons are indispensable, making diplomacy even more difficult and US-South Korea alliance coordination more essential.
Decades-long partners
Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism pushed North Korea and Iran together. For most of the past half-century they’ve been united in their struggle against US hegemony. In May 1989, then President Ali Khamenei visited North Korea and drove through Pyongyang in a motorcade with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Thousands of North Koreans dotted the streets and cheered for the two leaders. According to his biography, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini selected Khamenei as his successor due to the perceived success of that trip.
During Khamenei’s more-than-three-decade reign as Iran’s supreme leader, North Korea and Iran cooperated on multiple fronts, especially in the military. The two governments sold each other advanced weapons and military technology. For example, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, North Korea sold Scud missiles to Iran. The arms trade between the two governments evolved into more sophisticated collaboration on solid-fuel missile technology and the sale of the larger Hwasong-7 missile to Iran.
While geographic distance and cultural dissimilarity disinclined both countries from becoming full-blown allies, the two regimes respected each other’s peculiarities. In 2013, the avowedly anti-religious North Korea even opened a Shia mosque in Pyongyang for Iranian diplomats. In 2017, amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea, Iranian state media applauded the latter for its “success in humiliating the Great Satan.”
Validating nuclear weapons
While North Korea criticizes the attacks on Iran as the “hegemonic and gangster-like actions” of the US military, the Kim regime must also feel justified in its own pursuit of a nuclear arsenal. Despite pressure and international sanctions, the North Korean regime managed to do something that the much wealthier Iranians could not do: develop and sustain a nuclear weapons program.
But North Korea must also feel that its already small group of friends is now even smaller. While Iran was never as important to the North Korean economy as China or Russia, North Korea and Iran shared many of the same values and principles. Much like the North Korean system, the Iranian regime opposed Western notions of democracy and human rights. The two leaders saw each other as comrades. On a symbolic level, the loss of another friend in the Middle East is a blow to the already isolated Kim regime.
With Iran facing an intensifying US-Israeli military campaign widely perceived as aimed at regime change, North Korea is forced to consider whether entering the conflict would advance its strategic position. Skeptics once doubted that North Korea would meaningfully back Russia’s war in Ukraine, but it surprised observers by dispatching 12,000 troops to aid Russia’s war efforts.
But it is highly unlikely that North Korea will actively assist the Iranian regime. It is too far away to provide any meaningful military support. Moreover, although North Korea and Iran have maintained military cooperation over the years, their relationship lacks deep economic or cultural foundations. They do not share a common communist legacy, nor do they possess overlapping religious traditions that would compel solidarity at any cost.
Finally, North Korea already counts Russia as its principal military patron. North Korea likely gleaned significant operational lessons from the battlefield in Kursk, and seeking additional combat experience in Iran would offer limited strategic upside while dramatically increasing risk.
A familiar lesson
North Korea will draw a familiar lesson from the Iran crisis: Regimes without nuclear weapons are vulnerable, and those with them are far less so. For the Kim regime, the bomb was never just a prestige project – it was a survival strategy. Recent events in the Middle East will harden, not moderate, that conviction.
That reality sharpens, rather than diminishes, the stakes of the US-South Korea alliance. North Korea already fields a growing nuclear and missile arsenal capable of threatening South Korea, Japan, and US forces in Asia. The US-South Korea alliance is treaty-bound and credibility-bound to deter that threat.
If Pyongyang believes its nuclear posture has been vindicated, it will continue refining it. The question is not whether North Korea intervenes in Iran. It is whether Washington and Seoul are prepared to manage a hereditary dictatorship that sees its nuclear weapons program as non-negotiable.
Benjamin R. Young is a non-resident fellow of the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) and assistant professor of intelligence studies at Fayetteville State University. Originally published by KEI, this article is republished with permission.