South Korean President Park Geun-hye meets with young Iranians in traditional Korean dresses, who visited a Korean culture exhibition held at a convention center in Tehran on May 2, 2016. Earlier in the day, Park held the first bilateral summit since the establishment of their diplomatic ties in 1962. (Yonhap)
Well it looks like it was worth President Park wearing a headscarf during her trip to Iran because she was able to sign a number of agreements that could lead to multi-billion dollar construction projects in Iran:
President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday South Korea and Iran can produce a win-win situation if they work together in infrastructure projects in the Islamic Republic. Iran is pushing to rebuild an economy and modernize its infrastructure after the U.N. lifted sanctions in a follow-up to a landmark deal reached with the United States and five world powers over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
“I am here to pursue the path of common prosperity with old friend Iran,” Park said in a forum attended by some 450 South Korean and Iranian business executives and leaders in the Iranian capital. On Monday, Park and her Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani observed the signing of nearly 20 out of 66 memorandums of understanding worth up to US$45.6 billion after their summit. Seoul hopes the MOUs could pave the way for South Korean companies to eventually win massive infrastructure projects under way in Iran. [Yonhap]
When dealing with the Middle East actions speak louder than words and so far there has been no action on Iran’s part to support their recent rhetoric:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested Monday that his country is opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, a move that underscores growing pressure on the communist country.
“We cheer for peace on the Korean Peninsula and we are, in principle, opposed to any nuclear development,” Rouhani said through a translator in a joint news conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye after their summit in Tehran.
“Our basic position is that nuclear weapons should be removed from the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East.”
Rouhani’s comments are the latest act of international pressure being exerted on North Korea to give up its nuclear program and end its provocations. [Yonhap]
What strikes out at me in regards to President Park’s visit to Iran is that she is wearing a veil. What made this jump out at me was that I remembered that she did not wear a veil when she visited Saudi Arabia last year:
President Park Geun-hye (left) meets with Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, during a bilateral summit. They discuss ways to strengthen bilateral relations across a range of sectors. [Korea.net]
She is not only wearing a veil, but one that is covering not only her hair, but her entire neck. According to this Korea Times article President Park was trying to show respect for Iranian customs and culture. How about the Iranian government show respect to her and understand she is a head of state of one of the world’s great country’s and should not be subjugated to Iranian customs. If Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ever visits South Korea does anyone think we will see them dressed up in a hanbok in respect to Korean culture?
Maybe while President Park is in Tehran she can tell the ayatollahs to stop selling missile and nuclear technology that is being used to threaten the existence of her country:
President Park Geun-hye talks to a foreign official before boarding the presidential plane at Seoul Airport on May 1, 2016, to leave for Iran. (Yonhap)
South Korean President Park Geun-hye left for Tehran on Sunday on a historic trip meant to boost political and economic relations between the two countries.
Park is set to meet with her Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, on Monday in the first meeting between the leaders of the two countries since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations in 1962.
The summit will set the tone for relations at a time when the Islamic Republic has emerged as a promising market following the lifting of international sanctions earlier this year.
“We expect the trip to serve as an occasion to take a new leap forward in bilateral ties, which have been stalled due to the international sanctions,” said Kim Kyou-hyun, a senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs.
The U.N. has lifted sanctions on Iran in a follow-up to a nuclear deal reached with the United States and five world powers over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. [Yonhap]
I guess this means we will no longer see any defenders of the 1994 Agreed Framework considering one of the nation’s top Democrats has now disavowed it:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the recent landmark deal on Iran’s nuclear program grew out of “the failure of the North Korea experience.”
Kerry also said that Iran and North Korea are different, defending the Iranian deal during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing as Republican senators raised concern the Iranian deal could fall apart like the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea.
“Iran has also agreed to accept the additional protocol, and the additional protocol is an outgrowth of the failure of the North Korea experience, which put in additional access requirements precisely so that we do know what Iran is doing,” Kerry said.
The 1994 deal with North Korea, known as the Agreed Framework, required North Korea to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political concessions. But the deal fell apart after the North was found to have been running a secret nuclear program in late 2002.
Kerry stressed that Iran is different from the North.
“Unlike North Korea, that created a nuclear weapon and exploded one and pulled out of the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), Iran has done none of that,” he said.
The North Korea experience is “what gave birth to the additional protocol” in the Iranian deal, Kerry said. [Yonhap]
I can still remember the good old days when Democrats claimed the failure of the Agreed Framework was all Bush’s fault. How times have changed.
This deal with Iran does not mean much for North Korea because they have already gone down this road two times before with two different US presidential administrations and cheated on the deals both times.
The South’s unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, was blunt in comments Tuesday about what to expect. “Conclusion of Iranian negotiations will not lead to solution of the nuclear problem” in North Korea he told foreign correspondents here. But as the North now represents “the only country … to exercise nuclear power to intimidate the rest of the world…the agreement will at least give some pressure on North Korea.”
It is not known whether negotiators in Vienna discussed or agreed privately to address the broader issue of Tehran’s assistance or cooperation with Pyongyang.
WILL TEHRAN STOP AIDING PYONGYANG?
Analysts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations say that how North Korea now responds to the new deal “ultimately will depend on whether US negotiators also have a tacit understanding with Iran to curtail questionable relationships with North Korea in these areas.” If North Korea “loses another customer,” Mr. Snyder believes, “Pyongyang may take notice.”
So far Pyongyang has kept its silence. The North Korean media has yet to report on the historic accord with Iran, much less offer any commentary.
The Iran deal does give Pyongyang something new to worry about, says Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “I bet their gut reaction will be along the lines of, ‘We are more isolated than ever, with even Iran making peace with Washington,’” he says. [Christian Science Monitor]
You can read the rest, but if anything the Iranians took solace in the fact that the North Koreans were able to cheat on their deals for many years with the US turning a blind eye to their activities due to other pressing concerns in the world at the time. If the North Koreans feel like they can cut yet another deal and get a lot free goodies for little or nothing in return they would probably do it. However, I don’t think the Obama administration is going to be as eager to cut a deal with North Korea simply because of their history of cheating on past deals. As always time will tell.
This report is not really surprising because infecting North Korea’s nuclear program with a Stuxnet like virus would be far more challenging than Iran. Reportedly the US and Israel were able to infect the Iranians’ nuclear program with the virus despite it being on a closed Intranet. They did this by infecting a worker’s USB thumb drive with the virus who then plugged it into a computer within the intranet. With Iran being a more open society it would be easier to place intelligence assets within the country to pull off such an attack. In North Korea it would be much more difficult due to the closed nature of their society where most people are not even free to move about the country without an official permit much less get close enough to a nuclear facility to identify ways to infect their systems:
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The United States tried to deploy a version of the Stuxnet computer virus to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons program five years ago but ultimately failed, according to people familiar with the covert campaign.
The operation began in tandem with the now-famous Stuxnet attack that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010 by destroying a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium. Reuters and others have reported that the Iran attack was a joint effort by U.S. and Israeli forces.
According to one U.S. intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.
But U.S. agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.
The official said the National Security Agency-led campaign was stymied by North Korea’s utter secrecy, as well as the extreme isolation of its communications systems. A third source, also previously with U.S. intelligence, said he had heard about the failed cyber attack but did not know details.
North Korea has some of the most isolated communications networks in the world. Just owning a computer requires police permission, and the open Internet is unknown except to a tiny elite. The country has one main conduit for Internet connections to the outside world, through China. [Reuters via a reader tip]
You can read more at the link, but I am sure the North Koreans are smart enough to not be using USB thumb drives thus meaning their systems are likely only vulnerable to an insider attack.
President Park Geun-hye (left) meets with Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, during a bilateral summit. They discuss ways to strengthen bilateral relations across a range of sectors. [Korea.net],
