Trump-Kim deal signals North Korea may never give up its nuclear weapons

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hasn’t given up a single nuclear weapon, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from reassuring Americans on Twitter that they should “sleep well” because the nuclear threat fromPyongyang is over. 

That public strategy is leading some analysts to believe Trump might be willing to live with a nuclear armed North Korea just as the U.S. has learned to live with other nuclear nations, like Pakistan and India. Despite tough U.S. talk before the summit about “complete” and “verifiable” denuclearization, the vaguely worded 1 1/2-page document Trump and Kim signed doesn’t include that language and essentially represents “tacit approval” of North Korea’s nuclear program, said Jeffery Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, California. “I don’t think it would be the end of the world, because it’s the world we already live in,” he said. “My worry is that the president keeps promising that Kim will give up his weapons. If he suddenly wakes up one day and realizes what’s really going on, he could just explode, and then we’re in real trouble.”

North Korea tunnel near nuclear base collapses; up to 200 killed: Report

A tunnel at North Korea’s nuclear test site collapsed after Pyongyang’s sixth atomic test in September, possibly killing more than 200 people, Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi said on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.

Reuters has not been able to verify the report.

About 100 workers at the Punggye-ri nuclear site were affected by the initial collapse, which took place around Sept. 10, the broadcaster said.

A second collapse during a rescue operation meant it was possible the death toll could have exceeded 200, it added.

Experts have said a series of tremors and landslides near the nuclear test base probably mean the country’s sixth and largest blast on Sept. 3 has destabilised the region, and the Punggye-ri nuclear site may not be used for much longer to test nuclear weapons.

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Trump is going to make a huge mistake on the Iran deal

President Trump is expected this week to refuse to recertify that Iran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal, a milestone diplomatic agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Mr Trump seems poised to take that action despite the reality that Iran is not violating the terms of the deal. In fact, his key national security cabinet officers have publicly said that Iran is meeting its commitments. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with monitoring and verifying the deal, has issued eight reports over the past two years echoing these conclusions.

Instead, the president seems prepared to argue that the deal is no longer in the United States’ vital national security interest because of Iran’s other activities in the Middle East, including its support for terrorism, its meddling in Syria and Yemen, and its threats to Israel’s security.

The Trump administration is right that Iranian behaviour destabilises the region, but wrong when it says that such behaviour contradicts the “spirit” of the agreement and that he is therefore justified in refusing to certify Iran’s compliance. In fact, Iran’s troubling foreign policy is precisely why the deal was necessary in the first place: An Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would be far more threatening to regional and global security.
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