JERUSALEM – A top Israeli journalist is warning that North Korea is continuing to provide Iran with technology to pursue nuclear weapons, and the Obama administration's plan to negotiate with Iran will only buy the nation time to complete its work.
The comments come from Caroline Glick, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post who this weekend was awarded the prestigious Guardian of Zion award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies.
In her acceptance speech, she linked Iran to the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel destroyed with an air attack on Sept. 6, 2007.
"We have to understand that North Korea is continuing to provide Iran nuclear technology," she told WND in an interview, citing ongoing collaboration between the two remaining members of the "Axis of Evil" President Bush first identified after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.The third member was Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post just days before accepting the award, Glick said Tehran spent between $1 billion and $2 billion on Syria's nuclear facility that was built by North Korea.
But the links don't end there.
"It is hard to imagine that it is mere coincidence that North's actions came just a week after Iran tested its solid fuel Sejil-2 missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers," she said of the recent missile tests by both North Korea and Iran.
"Aside from their chronological proximity, the main reason it makes sense to assume that Iran and North Korea coordinated their tests is because North Korea has played a central role in Iran's missile program,” she wrote.
Glick argued, "North Korea has been a trailblazer in its utilization of a mix of diplomatic aggression and seeming accommodation to alternatively intimidate and persuade its enemies to take not action. Iran has followed Pyongyang's model assiduously."
She warned that Obama's tactic of engaging in direct negotiations with Iran would only buy Iran the time needed to develop a nuclear weapons plan along the North Korean model.
Moreover, she cautioned. "The Obama administration's impotent response to Pyongyang's ICBM test last month and its similarly stuttering reaction to North Korea's nuclear test on Monday have shown Tehran that it no longer needs to even pretend to have an interest in negotiating aspects of its nuclear program with Washington or its European counterparts."
Glick noted that following the North Korean nuclear test last week, Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "Iran's nuclear issue is over."
"There is no reason to talk anymore," she wrote. "Just as Obama made clear that he intends to do nothing in response to North Korea's nuclear test, so Iran believes that the president will do nothing to impede its nuclear program."
Glick believes the Obama administration has given a green light to Iran to pursue a nuclear weapons program, insisting the Israeli government believes Iran will have a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium to build a bomb by the end of the year, which coincides with the amount of time Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States would suspend military action in providing time for talks with Iran to succeed.
"Unfortunately, though, due to the timeline Obama has set, it is clear that before he will be ready to lift a finger against Iran, the mullocracy will already have become a nuclear power," she wrote in the Jerusalem Post.
"All of this is music to the mullahs' ears. Between America's impotence against their North Korean allies and its unshakable commitment to keeping Israel on the hot seat, the Iranians know that they have no reason to worry about Uncle Sam."
In April 2008, the Bush administration released photographs documenting the claim that North Korea had assisted Syria in building the nuclear reactor that was destroyed by the Israeli air strike.
Last week, North Korea launched six short-range missiles and detonated an atomic device in a test blast.
At the end of last week, the Obama administration announced that satellite images had detected activity at a North Korean site that suggested North Korea was preparing to launch yet another long-range ballistic missile.
In a speech at a security meeting in Singapore on Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Kim Jong Il's regime that the United States "will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region, or on us," according to a report published by Bloomberg.
WorldNetDaily staff reporter Jerome Corsi currently is in Israel doing research on an electronic book on Israel and Iran entitled "Why Israel Can't Wait" that Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions plans to publish as an electronic book in July.
Special offers:
"The Late Great State of Israel"
Definitive work on Mideast – available only here!
"Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad"
"The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)"
"Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict"
Perfect gift! Compass that points to Jerusalem