North Korea, Iran may have cooperated on drone development, Israeli expert says

Seoul, Aug 30 (EFE).- Pyongyang may have obtained technology from Iran to develop its new drones, Israeli expert Tal Inbar said in Seoul on Wednesday.

The new drones that the North Korean regime displayed at an arms exhibition in Pyongyang in July could easily have their origin in Iran, Inbar said at a press conference organized by NK News, an American news website specializing in North Korea and based in Seoul.

Inbar said that a very plausible theory about how Pyongyang has gone in such a short time from producing small sized, low-altitude drones with little autonomy to making the new drones that appear to be copies of the American Reaper and Global Hawk drones is that Iran has directly transferred technology or know-how to it.

The Israeli analyst recalled that Tehran, which has shot down several US drones, including the Global Hawk, has publicly boasted of having copied these technologies used by Washington for espionage and aerial stealth attacks.

The latest example of this was the unveiling, just over a week ago, of the Mohajer-10, a new Iranian drone that is very similar to the US-made Reaper.

Inbar pointed out that although there was no official confirmation in this regard, the work of the so-called open source intelligence circles, as well as reports of UN experts, have in many cases signaled cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang in the past.

North Korean missiles derived from the Soviet Scud B served, for example, to cement Iran’s Shahab missile program in the 1990s.

The analyst also pointed out that both countries have managed to obtain weapons that the other party does not yet have operational, ranging from nuclear warheads to intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to space rockets, for which knowledge and technology can be shared “in exchange for money or oil.”

“Truth is, the world practically can’t do anything to stop this. It’s a little like drug trafficking,” Inbar said. EFE

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