“Earlier this month, North Korea conducted what appears to be its largest and most sophisticated nuclear test to date, but what may also be emerging from the story is the extent that Iran and North Korea are colluding in their efforts to grow their nuclear programs,” reports Radio America correspondent Greg Corombos. “One of the most telling indicators of this collaboration may be the reported presence of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi at the North Korean test. Mahabadi is the chief Iranian nuclear scientist and rarely travels outside of Iran.”
“That prospect is very troubling to foreign policy expert and accomplished fiction and non-fiction author Joel C. Rosenberg,” notes Corombos. “He is the author of The Twelfth Imam trilogy. The final installment of the trilogy, Damascus Countdown, debuts March 5. ‘That…certainly raises further concern that North Korea is actually doing the testing for Iran. In other words, Iran would essentially be paying for North Korea to be its research and development system, both for ballistic missiles but also for warheads,’ said Rosenberg. ‘So Iran might be assembling a bomb right now. We don’t know that for sure. North Korea might be providing the data for how to test it and make sure that it works. This convergence, this collaboration, between Iran and North Korea is exceedingly dangerous for the United States but also clearly for Israel and for the rest of the Middle East….North Korea is starving for cash but it has nuclear technology and has already tested nuclear weapons several times. Iran has plenty of cash, not the people but the government. It’s starving for hard data of what a nuclear test looks like without inviting an American or Israeli airstrike before Iran can get its weapons built and ready to launch. This is a match made in hell.”