Elbaradei, Iran's nukes, and the Egypt-North Korean Missile Connection

Elbaradei, the presumptive Egyptian president-in-waiting and former head of the IAEA nuclear inspection agency at the U.N., has made his position on nuclear proliferation absolutely clear in a joint press conference in Tehran in October 2009 with Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi – that there is indeed a nuclear threat in the region: Israel.

But wait. There’s more. Elbaradei’s infamously relaxed posture on nuclear proliferation may find a welcome trading partner in North Korea – with whom Egypt already has a long history of trade in missiles.

With the strong possibility of a new Egyptian government that is highly antagonistic to the U.S., Israel and Europe… and concern over the annual sales of $1 billion in military equipment, F16s etc. to Egypt…keep in mind the Egyptian connection to North Korean missiles back in the 1990s and more recently here from Yale’s Center for the Study of Globalization in 2003:

The case of the North Korean sale of missile and related technology to Egypt, that was recently discovered, offers insights into how these sales are conducted. In August 2002, a North Korean couple based in Bratislava in Slovakia, was found buying dual-purpose goods in China, Russia and Belarus and then exporting them to the Kader Factory for Developed Industries, an Egyptian government-funded military complex in Cairo. The couple, Kim Kum Jin and Ri Sun Hui, was found driving a black Mercedes and living in a luxury apartment in Bratislava, where they counted among their neighbors, the city’s mayor and a cabinet minister. According to Slovak investigations, both turned out be high-ranking North Korean agents with ties to Bureau 39, a shadowy wing of the ruling Korean Workers’ party controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Western and Asian intelligence agencies believe Bureau 39 was set up in 1994 to generate hard currency for Kim’s impoverished nation. Although Kim and Ri fled Slovakia before the authorities there could deliver an expulsion order, they left behind invoices and account books, which indicated that they were dealing in tens of millions of dollars worth of chemicals, military vehicles, and missile components.

It is now clear that the “Egyptian connection” played an important role in North Korea’s missile development which grew along with its sales. Pyongyang produced its first missile in 1976, a SA-2/HQ-2 SSM with a range of only 60-160 km. But its more advanced missile program began in the early 1980s when the Egyptians supplied North Korea with Soviet-made Frog artillery rockets and Scud B missiles – liquid-fuelled, surface-to-surface missiles that can deliver 1,000-kilogram payload up to 300 kilometers away.

Analysts believe Egyptian generosity was in return for Pyongyang’s assistance during the October 1973 war between Egypt and Israel. It gave the North Koreans a new lifeline. The North Koreans reverse-engineered the Scuds and soon began to manufacture them as Hwasong 5. A longer-range version, called Hwasong 6, was produced in 1985. It was followed in the 1990s by Medium-range and Intermediate-range ballistic missiles (see box). The revenue earned from its export seems to have been ploughed back to develop a new line of missiles. On 31 August 1998, North Korea test-launched a two-stage ballistic missile, Taepodong I. In 2000, North Korea developed its most advanced Intercontinental ballistic missile, the Taepodong 2. Taepodong 2 has a range of 6,700 kilometers-enough to reach the North American West Coast.

The Egyptian missile trade with North Korea has been noted recently by the Wall Street Journal and by Brigitte Gabriel in the Washington Examiner. And now, with a government in chaos, at best in transition in Egypt, a government in transition (and behind the scenes, chaotic) in North Korea, porous borders and ports, the risk of renewed missile trade is high.

With Elbaradei in charge, allied with the Muslim Brotherhood – with his “sterling” track record of denying the existence of, or minimizing nuclear weapons development and proliferation from Iran, North Korea, Pakistan – much can go wrong, and fast.

He has a long history as the reassuring front man for dangerous regimes, buying them time, buying them legitimacy. He even received a Nobel Peace Prize, he’s so good at it. He has the perfect resume to be front man for the Muslim Brotherhood, front man for an Egypt with massive armaments prepared to wage war – defensive jihad, it will be termed – in the region.