Bruce Bechtol, professor of political science at Angelo State University, spoke to a February 26 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
North Korea’s significant role in the violence roiling the Middle East was most recently evident in Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel. North Korean F-7 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) sold to the terror group were fired at kibbutzim in southern Israel during Hamas’s incursion. An Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) investigation revealed Korean writing on the F-7s trigger mechanism, proving its origins – “it’s not a smoking gun, it’s a smoking Howitzer.” As early as 2014, a deal with North Korea brokered through a Lebanese front company supplied Hamas with multiple rocket launchers (MRLs), rockets, and laser-guided (specifically produced by North Korea) anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) that Hamas has used against Israel.
Gaza’s vast tunnel network “look[s] almost exactly” like the tunnels under the demilitarized zone [DMZ] in Korea for a reason. North Korea gave Hamas the technical support and training for construction of its extensive tunnel system within which the terror group can hide. The arms smuggled into the Gaza Strip go through Sudan and through tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza. The huge cache of weapons in Hamas’s possession points to the ineffectiveness of Egypt’s interdiction.
North Korea has no compunction selling weapons to terrorist groups. Thus, countries such as Israel and the U.S. must consider North Korea’s proliferation of weaponry “an existential national security threat” they have yet to address through “proactive means.” Washington has been “slow” to focus on Pyongyang, ostensibly because the U.S. is in “sensitive talks” with the regime about its nuclear program. Yet, North Korea still has nuclear weapons, and it is destabilizing not only the Middle East, but also Sub-Saharan Africa.
In his 2018 book, North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, Bechtol details North Korea’s supply of weapons to Hamas, which is but one of the Iranian regime’s many proxies receiving North Korean weaponry and destabilizing the region. Other Iranian proxies receiving North Korean weaponry include Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. Therefore, “destroying North Korea’s illicit arms networks in the Middle East runs through Iran.”
Syria purchased Scud-C missiles from North Korea with the billions of Saudi dollars awarded to the Assad regime for fighting against Iraq in the Gulf War. Later, the Syrians built a fabrication facility for the missiles with North Korean parts and technical assistance. Syria has been testing Scud-D missile systems purchased from Pyongyang for years, and with North Korea’s assistance, Syria used them during the early stages of the Syrian Civil War.
Using military subsidies from Iran, Syria paid North Korea to upgrade its capabilities by resupplying Assad’s military forces with chemical weapons. In 2007, Israel destroyed Syria’s nuclear reactor that was built with North Korea’s assistance. In 2016, North Korea supplied Syria with a variety of artillery systems, including ATGMs, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), and machine guns. Pyongyang also provided two battalions of special operations forces that fought for Syria in Aleppo. By 2018, North Korea “was proliferating hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of conventional and unconventional weapons a year” on behalf of Syria during the Civil War. In 2019, hundreds of North Korean workers arrived in Syria and have remained there until this day.
From the 1980s to 2000, North Korea provided Hezbollah with arms and training. However, in the 2000s, Pyongyang aided Iran’s proxy by “building a large underground network in Southern Lebanon” with the capacity to contain extensive command and control, arms, and comprehensive support systems. Although “Hezbollah is way more developed militarily than Hamas,” destruction of both movements’ tunnels can be aided by human intelligence gained from captured fighters who provide information on tunnel layouts, and by “seismic equipment” Israel uses to detect underground activity in tunnel locations.
A 2022 report by Israel’s Alma Research and Education Center stated that Hezbollah had reached a $13 million dollar deal with a North Korean front company to build a “45-kilometer tunnel system” that was completed in 2021. The Korean front companies launder Hezbollah’s payments through Lebanese, Iranian, or Emirati banks, which in turn launder these funds through China. North Korea then obtains these funds through third-party intermediaries.
In the past, the U.S. Treasury Department could interrupt the laundering process by sanctioning banks. Post-COVID, however, the North Koreans deal in Bitcoin, which is much more difficult to trace. Bechtol’s book, Rogue Allies: The Iran-North Korea Nexus, co-authored by Anthony Celso and due out this fall, details North Korean and Iranian money laundering using cryptocurrencies in cyberspace. It is on record that North Korea conducts more international crime using cyber theft “than any other entity on Earth.”
North Korea gave Hamas the technical support and training for construction of its extensive tunnel system within which the terror group can hide.
The Alma report stated that Syrian forces, as noted earlier, “provided Hezbollah with Scud-D missiles” and described chemical weapons in the hundreds, equipped with North Korea’s assistance and Iranian chemical weapons experts. These weapons are warehoused near the Syrian border with Israel. Increasingly, Hezbollah’s huge number of weapons has been a financial boon for North Korea’s “industrial military complex.”
In Yemen, the previous government had Scud-Cs, which the Houthis captured when they gained the advantage in the Civil War. The Iranians provided its Houthi proxy with the technical training to deploy the Scuds against the Saudis and Qataris. Tehran has since provided the Houthis with an updated version of the Scud-C. In 2019, the Houthis reached a deal, either directly or through the Iranians, to purchase tanks, trucks, machine guns, artillery and “more than one type of ballistic missile” from the North Koreans.
The proliferation of North Korean weaponry contributes to violence and instability in the Middle East. It behooves the U.S. to address this North Korean proliferation of weaponry that has been ongoing in the region since 2011.
