Iran's Failed Deterrence: Lessons for North Korea

The Diplomat

4 hours ago

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched a military operation, called 'Rising Lion,' against Iran, targeting its nuclear facilities, missile factories, air defense systems, and nuclear scientists. Another nuclear aspirant – and Iran's key strategic partner – North Korea will have been watching the conflict between Iran and Israel – and gaining lessons from some of the key factors that contributed to Iran's failure to deter such an Israeli attack. Moving forward, Pyongyang will not only seek to increase its own deterrence, but could assist Tehran in addressing current and future challenges related to its nuclear program.
The extensive Israeli military operations against Iran highlighted Iran's failure to deter Israeli aggression. For years, Israel had refrained from direct attacks on Iran, partly due to Iran's deterrent capabilities and its network of proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Additionally, concerns over potential regional escalation and the likelihood that Washington would not authorize Israeli military actions further constrained direct Israeli interventions.
However, the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel marked a turning point, leading to regional shifts. In the ensuing conflict, many of Iran's proxy forces, such as Hezbollah and Syrian militias, were significantly diminished or eliminated by Israel and other regional actors, altering the balance of power and deterrence dynamics.
The recent Israeli strikes on Iran – which targeted nuclear sites, missile launchers, missile storage facilities, radars, air defense systems, and missile defense infrastructure, along with the elimination of nuclear scientists and military leaders – reveal the extent to which Israel has penetrated Iran's military and intelligence networks. The Israeli military appears capable of locating and eliminating key personnel within Iran's military, nuclear, and political spheres. Moreover, Israel has demonstrated the capacity to intercept and strike targets within Iran, indicating a sophisticated level of operational surprise and intelligence.
The last notable deterrence failure was the U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear sites on June 22. Concerns about regional stability and potential wider conflict influenced previous administrations' hesitance; however, President Donald Trump authorized this strike. The joint Israeli and U.S. operations not only underscored Iran's inability to deter these adversaries but also exposed the limitations of Iran's allies – namely China and Russia – in providing effective military or political deterrence. Both Beijing and Moscow refrained from deploying military threats to defend Tehran or to dissuade Israel and Washington from their actions.
This series of events underscores the fragility of Iran's deterrent posture – and offers crucial lessons for North Korea regarding the importance of strategic resilience, intelligence penetration, and the potential consequences of asymmetric warfare and proxy dynamics.
Rethinking North Korean Deterrence
The setbacks experienced by Iran raise important questions about North Korea's core security assumptions on the credibility of deterrence, the reliability of alliances, and the extent of intelligence infiltration.
Pyongyang operates under the belief that its missile, artillery, and nuclear capabilities are sufficiently credible to deter any potential attack by Washington or its regional allies. However, Iran's experience demonstrates that such deterrence can be fragile. If the credibility of nuclear deterrence is called into question, North Korea must consider whether its own deterrent would withstand similar challenges.
That said, North Korea is much farther along in developing its nuclear weapons program than Iran. Thus Iran's recent confrontation with Israel and the United States is likely to reinforce Pyongyang's perception that its pursuit of nuclear weapons has been the right choice, although it has been costly. Therefore Iran's fate will harden Kim Jong Un's belief that he should never dismantle the nuclear program voluntarily. The question is whether he is ready to deploy the ultimate weapon in the moment of truth.
North Korea's strategic security also hinges on the assumption that its alliances – particularly with China and Russia – are as steadfast as initially believed. Iran's reliance on support from these powers did not fully prevent targeted actions or vulnerabilities. North Korea must ask: will Beijing and Moscow genuinely deter or withstand external pressures or military actions against North Korea's key military sites? They certainly did not in the case of Iran, where support was limited to diplomatic statements. Pyongyang must ask itself the hard question: does North Korea constitute, in any meaningful way, a strategic asset to its allies – one that is so vital that they would feel a genuine sense of loss if it were to collapse? Only then would North Korea's allies be prompted to protect Pyongyang with their own militaries.
Finally, Pyongyang assumes that its military and scientific installations are secure from foreign intelligence operations. Iran's experience suggests otherwise; despite efforts to conceal sensitive sites, Israeli and other intelligence agencies penetrated deeply into Iran's networks. North Korea should recognize that foreign intelligence services likely have access to information and assets it believes are hidden, and must adapt its security and concealment strategies accordingly.
What Will, or Can, North Korea Do for Iran?
Finally, it is important to consider the question of how North Korea is likely to respond to the potential prospect of Iran's collapse. North Korea has already lost its longtime partner in the Middle East, Assad's Syria, with whom Pyongyang stood against the United States and cooperated to develop strategic weapons, including nuclear arms. North Korea is now facing the serious prospect of losing yet another ally in just six months. Losing Iran would be painful to North Korea, and therefore it may look for ways to help its strategic and ideological partner during the war or after the war.
History clearly indicates that such a scenario is not implausible. North Korea dispatched pilots, tank crews, missile engineers, and operators to Egypt and Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel. It is not clear how much Pyongyang's assistance added to the war effort of the two armies, but what is notable is that the North Koreans stepped up when their Cold War superpower patrons completely remained on the sidelines – a remarkably similar feature to the current war in Iran. In fact, Kim Il Sung sent a group of North Korean pilots to take the place of the Soviet pilots and advisers expelled by the Egyptian government just months before the war, due to the Soviets' opposition to Egypt's war effort. After the war, Kim Il Sung boasted of his participation in the Yom Kippur War to resist, in his view, an 'imperialist' Israel and apparently chastised the communist superpowers for their inaction.
North Korea is likely to weigh different ways of assisting Iran and wait for the right opportunities to act. Will North Korea conduct a nuclear test for the Islamic Republic of Iran? Will it help Iran race toward the bomb in the aftermath of the war? Will it transport some of its enriched uranium to Tehran? It is not clear which path North Korea will take, but the available options are nothing short of alarming.