Don’t Lump Iran and North Korea Together

A lot of people tend to lump Iran and North Korea in the same category.

That’s a mistake. It is actually a poor comparison. North Korea is relatively isolated. They have no underlying doctrine or ideology that ties them to anyone else, other than maybe China and Cuba, though China has evolved economically and Cuba is geographically literally a “world away” from the Korean peninsula. North Korea has nothing that anyone else needs or wants. They pose a regional threat and don’t have any real ability to threaten outside that region (though they are indeed working on it). North Korea is in a race against time. They are the last vestiges of a discredited ideology. Over time the regime there can’t survive without at least evolving. Iran is far different. They have an Islamic revolutionary ideology and sharia doctrine that tie them to jihadist organizations and millions of Shia Muslims around the world.

They have wealth, which has enabled them to form alliances of convenience with Sunni groups like HAMAS and Al Qaeda from time to time because they provide such groups with money, arms, training and safe haven. They have a constitution that requires that they export their Islamic revolution, by any and all means. They have a national holiday called “Death to America” day. They have been waging a proxy war against America since 1979. For example, the jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah is basically an Iranian foreign legion. Hezbollah has carried out numerous attacks against Americans and taken nearly 1000 American lives. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah worked together to provide IEDs to kill U.S. GIs in Iraq and the IRGC has armed and aided the Taliban in Afghanistan, despite the fact that the Taliban is Sunni.

Iran and Hezbollah have a robust infrastructure in the West, including here in America, which poses a real threat of going kinetic and provides a source of intelligence and funding in the meantime. Iran and Hezbollah have been involved in operations in far-flung places such as the Philippines, Thailand, Argentina, Bulgaria, Germany, the UK, Canada, South America, Mexico, North Carolina and Michigan. They have global reach. On top of all this, Iran has a nuclear weapons program and a ballistic missile program which are being developed to provide a nuclear umbrella under which they can conduct their global Islamic revolutionary operations. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said: Iran isn’t building ICBMs to threaten Israel. They already have missiles that can reach Israel. They are developing ICBMs to threaten America.

Iran poses a far greater threat than North Korea to America, to some of our closest allies and to stability and peace in the world because the Iranian threat is far more developed and multi-faceted.

Preventing the ayatollahs from obtaining nuclear weapons is the most urgent national security imperative today. Should the ayatollahs become armed with nuclear weapons, future generations will ask of us: “How did they ever let it happen?”