North Korean state media reported Wednesday that a high-level economic delegation from Pyongyang was on its way to Iran for what will be the first known talks between the two U.S. adversaries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The talks come as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is accelerating the pace of his regime’s weapons tests, and as U.S. national security sources warn of expanding diplomatic, economic and military ties between North Korea, Iran, Russia and China. Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford D. May recently described the four-way alignment as an “axis of tyrannies” in an exclusive Threat Status Influencers video interview.
An analysis by the independent group United Against Nuclear Iran warned in 2022 that “the Iranian-North Korean threat is compounded by the two nations’ cooperation, especially in the realm of nuclear and ballistic missile development.” This week’s North Korea-Iran visit comes just more than a week after China dispatched a high-level delegation to Pyongyang.
China’s military is conducting research on sea-based neurotoxins, raising new fears among U.S. officials that Beijing is secretly developing deadly biological weapons for use in a possible future conflict. Concerns about the marine toxin research were aired publicly for the first time by the U.S. government earlier this month in the annual State Department arms control compliance report.
The report for the first time contended that China “continued to engage in biological activities with potential [biological weapons] applications, including possible development of toxins for military purposes, which raise concerns regarding its compliance” with the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which went into effect in 1975 and was ratified by China in 1984.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that marine toxins are naturally occurring chemicals that are among the world’s most deadly poisons. They attack the central nervous system and can kill people exposed to very small amounts of the poisons.
Retired CIA Clandestine Services officer Daniel N. Hoffman says no in a wide-ranging exclusive interview on the Threat Status weekly podcast. “Deterrence … means that your adversary is not going to strike you because they fear that you will strike them even harder. It will be worse for them. We’ve lost that 100%, …and we’ve lost it repeatedly,” says Mr. Hoffman, who takes aim at what he calls President Biden’s “don’t escalate” foreign policy doctrine.
“When you talk about that being your preeminent goal, then the adversaries don’t fear you because they know that you don’t want the one thing that is going to prevent them from attacking you,” he says, citing Iran’s recent attack on Israel as an example.
“If you’re wondering what are the ramifications of this Iranian attack, they are way beyond the Middle East, because Iran has demonstrated that we value no escalation over real deterrence,” Mr. Hoffman says. “That’s my concern. This harkens back to the 1930s. It’s a slippery slope to appeasement.”
The Transportation Security Administration is testing sophisticated facial recognition tools and working with Big Tech companies on “digital IDs” to identify passengers.
The TSA says it recently held talks with Apple and Google over an ongoing collaboration for digital IDs to replace physical identification cards at airport security checkpoints. “TSA is working with the tech giants so passengers can identify themselves with IDs stored on their phones at airports,” the agency said in an April 19 statement, according to National Security Tech Correspondent Ryan Lovelace.
TSA Chief Innovation Officer Steven Parker posted on LinkedIn that the meetings with Apple and Google provided government officials with details on the status of the digital IDs’ acceptability at airports in “approximately 20 states.” A list of participating airports is visible on the TSA‘s website, on a page documenting the agency’s use of “facial recognition and digital identity solutions.”
The legislative logjam for fresh U.S. military aid to Ukraine has finally been broken in Washington. The Pentagon said Tuesday that the pipeline for weapons to Ukraine could open “within days” after the Senate and Mr. Biden give final approval for $61 billion in military assistance.
Ukraine has been pleading for aid while facing weapons shortages and sustained Russian advances in its southern and eastern regions. The question now is whether U.S. and other Western military aid — the U.K. has pledged a fresh $620 million this week — will reach Kyiv in time to prevent further territorial losses this summer.
The Pentagon thus far hasn’t disclosed what items could be in the first tranche of weapons. Ukraine has regularly pleaded for additional air defense and artillery ammunition to block Russian advances on several fronts in recent weeks.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “supreme leader” since 1989, seeks to establish a new Middle Eastern empire and regards Israel as “a cancer to be extirpated,” according to Threat Status opinion contributor Clifford D. May, who writes that nearly all of Iran’s nuclear advances “have occurred during the Biden administration.”
“Last Friday, the foreign ministers of the G7 … released a statement asserting their ‘determination that Iran must never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon,’” writes Mr. May. “It’s doubtful that those words on paper prompted Mr. Khamenei to reassess his grand ambition to establish a nuclear-armed, anti-American empire in league with the nuclear-armed, anti-American regimes in China, Russia and North Korea.”
With regard to Iran and Israel, he writes, “what we’re witnessing is no rivalry or game of tit-for-tat. It’s a battle in a long war, one that will shape the world our children inherit.”
“It has been over two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, yet many well-known international brands, despite global condemnation and strict multilateral sanctions, continue to cling to the Russian market,” writes Michael Podolsky, an American entrepreneur with Ukrainian roots and the CEO of PissedConsumer.com.
“As American citizens, our taxes help Ukraine defend itself. At the same time, companies such as Unilever, Mondelez and Procter & Gamble are working against us and undoing this contribution by paying taxes in Russia and possibly even sending their employees to fight against Ukraine,” Mr. Polsky writes, asking, “How can this contradiction stand?”
Correction: An earlier version of the newsletter misspelled PissedConsumer.com CEO Michael Podolsky’s last name.
• April 30 — The Trajectory of India-Russia Ties Amid the War in Ukraine, U.S. Institute of Peace.
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