North Korea's nuclear test reveals a major flaw with the Iran deal

North Korea's fourth nuclear test could have been a crucial step toward Pyongyang developing thermonuclear capability — and a breakthrough for a second country with potential nuclear ambitions, as well.

Iran has established ties to the North Korean nuclear-weapons program. As The Daily Beast notes, Iranian officials, including Iranian nuclear program head Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, were present during North Korea's three previous nuclear tests — in 2006, 2009, and 2013.

Testing data is a potential bonanza for a nuclear-weapons program. It could include information about the design and yield of the device detonated — or about the size and configuration of the bomb's uranium hemisphere or plutonium core. Testing data could indicate the weight and shape of the nuclear device, its triggering mechanisms, or the warhead's material composition.

As Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has written, there is also some design and technological overlap between Iranian and North Korean-produced ballistic missiles, suggesting the two countries have shared information about nuclear delivery platforms as well.

north korea south nuclear nukeAP Photo/Lee Jin-manPeople walk by a screen showing the news reporting about an earthquake near North Korea's nuclear facility, in Seoul, South Korea.

Last July, Iran reached a deal with a US-led group of world powers in which Tehran agreed to temporary and non-binding limitations on its nuclear program.

Those came in exchange for the eventual lifting of most US and nearly all United Nations and European sanctions on the country, in addition to the removal of embargoes on the country's conventional arms transfers and ballistic-missile development.

It wouldn't necessarily be a violation of the nuclear deal for Iran to access information from a North Korean nuclear test. Thomas Moore, a former non-proliferation expert for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Business Insider that he doesn't think that accessing this information would necessarily be a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), either.

Like the NPT, the Iran nuclear deal is deliberately vague on exactly what constitutes a violation. But possession of test data isn't specifically proscribed under a provision in the Iran agreement that addresses prohibited activities related to nuclear-weapons design.

Under the deal, potential violations will be brought before an eight-member "joint commission" that includes Iran. The commission can then vote on whether an alleged violation is serious enough to then refer ot the United Nations Security Council.

Enforcement of what is inevitably a non-binding agreement is dependent on the political will of the joint commission's members. And the text itself is elastic in ways that could permit Iran to access information relevant to a push towards a nuclear-weapons capability.

Two countries have already proven that it's possible to successfully develop nuclear weapons without carrying out a test.

Pakistan is believed to have possessed nuclear weapons since as early as the late 1980s, but did not carry out a test until 1998.

More pertinently, Israel is thought to have possessed nuclear weapons since the late 1960s, and is believed to have a diverse arsenal of miniaturized strategic weapons for delivery through fighter aircraft and through both land- and sea-based ballistic missiles.

But Israel didn't need to test a nuclear weapon even during the crucial early years of its program — partly because of the country's extensive access to French testing data.

"In the early phases, the amount of collaboration between the French and Israeli nuclear weapons design programs made testing unnecessary," US Army Col. Warner D. Farr wrote in a 1999 study for the Federation of American Scientists' Counterproliferation Papers.

He continued: "There were several Israeli observers at the French nuclear tests and the Israelis had 'unrestricted access to French nuclear test explosion data.'"

An outside country's testing data can be crucial in establishing a clandestine nuclear capability. But even if Iran might have access to North Korean nuclear data, the international community has an incomplete understanding of what the country is currently capable of doing with this information.

http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-nuclear-test-iran-deal-implications-2016-1