North Korea’s ballistic missile. Credit: Wikipedia By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 21 2026 (IPS) The ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East—involving the US, Israel, Palestine, Iran and Lebanon—have indirectly bolstered North Korea’s plans to expand its nuclear arsenal. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is quoted as saying the American attacks on Iran justified his decision to strengthen his military power and would eventually make his country safe in a world shaped by President Trump’s foreign policy.
The headline in a New York Times article last week read: “North Korea Tests New Weapons, Drawing Lessons from War in the Middle East”.
Among the weapons tested were missiles carrying cluster munition and graphite bomb payloads, much like weapons that have appeared in the Middle East, the Times said. The testing signals that North Korea is trying to learn from the Middle East war.
Responding to President Trump’s interest in meeting with him, the North Korean leader has said he would agree to a meeting, only if the US formally recognizes his country as a nuclear power—and argued that leaders of Iraq and Libya would have survived US attacks if they possessed a nuclear deterrent.
“I don’t see any reason not to get along well with the United States if it withdraws its hostile policy towards us and respects our current (nuclear) status”, he said in a speech last February. Trump met with the North Korean leader three times during his first term in office (2017–2021), including summits in Singapore (June 201 and Hanoi (February 2019), followed by a brief meeting at the DMZ (June 2019), where Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to enter North Korea.
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Stimson Center points out that despite stringent international economic sanctions imposed primarily through the UN Security Council, North Korea’s progress in nuclear and missile development as well as in its nuclear doctrine has been remarkable, particularly since negotiations with the Trump administration stalled in 2018-19.
North Korea’s position that denuclearization is non-negotiable was again emphasized at their most recent Party Congress held in February 2026.
Dr M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, Director pro tem, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told Inter Press Service the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran are unprovoked and further add to the incentive for countries to acquire nuclear weapons. “There is no way to be sure that such acquisition would shield such countries under all circumstances, especially when military powers like the United States act with such belligerence”. But rather than go down that direction, he pointed out, “our efforts should be focused on ensuring that countries do not resort to military violence and attacking other countries, and differences are settled through peaceful and diplomatic means. While the current leaderships in many countries might not be inclined to act in such ways, it is up to civil society and social movements to help steer governments in a more peaceful direction, declared Dr Ramana.
North Korea has made “very serious” progress in its ability to produce more nuclear weapons, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said, in another sign that the regime is seeking to use its nuclear arsenal to ensure its survival, according to the London Guardian.
North Korea is thought to have assembled about 50 nuclear warheads, although some experts are skeptical of its claims that it is able to miniaturize them so they can be attached to long-range ballistic missiles.
Speaking during a visit to Seoul, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed reports of a rapid rise in activity at North Korea’s main nuclear complex, Yongbyon.
Grossi said work had intensified at Yongbyon’s 5MW reactor, reprocessing unit, light water reactor and other facilities, and the country was believed to possess several dozen nuclear warheads.
In an interview with IPS, Alice Slater, who serves on the Boards of World Beyond War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and is also a UN NGO Representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told IPS “once again, North Korea is being singled out as a rogue state for complaining that its plans to strengthen its military capacity is justified given the US destruction of Iraq and Libya which never made any effort to go nuclear as North Korea did.” It was widely unreported, she said, that North Korea was the only nuclear country to support a vote in 2016 at the UN First Committee that authorized negotiations to go forward on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons which resulted in the 2017 adoption of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Every single nuclear state as well as the states sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella, she pointed out, boycotted the meeting (except the Netherlands which was ordered to attend the UN meeting by a vote of its Parliament). Which ones were the real rogue states? she asked.
While the news, dominated by what has been described by Ray McGovern founder of Veterans Intelligence Professions for Sanity as part of the MICIMATT (the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academic Think Tank complex), is now trumpeting the new nuclear dangers and the frightening prospects of potential proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional nations, no attention is being paid to the opportunities to put a halt to the burgeoning nuclear arms race and the US race to weaponize space, characterized most recently by US plans for a “Golden Dome” estimated to cost 1.5 billion over the next years.
“There is a clear connection,” said Slater, “between maintaining space for peace and the willingness of Russia and China to negotiate for nuclear disarmament, going back to the time when Gorbachev proposed to Reagan that the US and Russia eliminate their nuclear arsenals provided the US gave up its plans to dominate and control space in its Vision 2020 document.”
While Reagan liked the idea of nuclear abolition, he refused to give up his Star Wars plans. Russia and China tabled a draft treaty in the consensus-bound UN Committee in Geneva in 2014 and 2018 which the US blocked, refusing to allow any discussion. This past May 2025, on the 80th Anniversary of WWII, they issued a stunning proposal calling for global cooperation, supporting the “ central coordinating role of the UN ” and asking for a number of steps that could increase “ strategic stability ”
In particular, they criticized the US Golden Dome program, urging the need for the early launch of negotiations to conclude a legally binding multilateral instrument based on their draft treaty on the prevention of weapons and the use of force in outer space. They even pledged to promote an international commitment “ not to be the first to deploy weapons in outer space ”. “Were the peace and arms control movements in the world to take up this extraordinary call and opportunity to reverse the disastrous course we appear to be plummeting towards—and demand that our governments enter negotiations on a treaty to guarantee that we will maintain a weapons and war free environment in space, there is little doubt that a new path will also be opened to finally ban the bomb”. Time to give peace a chance, declared Slater.
Meanwhile, States Parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) will be meeting at the United Nations for the 2026 NPT Review Conference April 27-May 22.
The Review Conference comes at a time of increased nuclear threats arising from armed conflicts involving nuclear armed States, in particular the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the US/Israel invasion of Iran. “This will make the deliberations and negotiations in New York very difficult, but also extremely important”, according to Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND).
The PNND says it will be actively involved in the Review Conference – in conjunction with activities in parliaments around the world – to support the NPT by advancing nuclear risk-reduction, nuclear arms control, common security and the global elimination of nuclear weapons. IPS UN Bureau Report