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The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 is seen during its test in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, July 5 2017.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Was North Koreas missile test on Monday a game-changer for Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities?

The word is already out on the test: North Koreas missile test on Monday was an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile.

That means, according to most estimates, North Koreas missile could hit Alaska and a much wider swath of the world than it could have hit before.

What if North Korea transfers this technology to Iran?

In June, ex-US ambassador to the UN John Bolton told The Jerusalem Post that it is only a matter of time before North Korea successfully places miniaturized nuclear warheads on missiles. Plenty of people have already done it and the day North Korea gets nuclear weapons, Iran could have it the next day by wire transfer.

In February, two ex-Israeli intelligence officers wrote an analysis for the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies arguing that there are massive transfers of nuclear-related technology and know-how between North Korea and Iran.

In late June, top analyst and frequent US government adviser Anthony Cordesman summarized decades of analysis on the North Korea-Iran nuclear connection, concluding that even if evidence of the connection should be scrutinized and there were other proliferators in play, it seems highly likely that Iranian and North Korean cooperation continues at some level.

And Irans state-run news agency issued a statement about expediting Iran-North Korea cooperation and a joint visit of high-level officials the day after the North Korea missile test even if the word nuclear was not explicitly in the press release.

So most of the debate is not about whether nuclear advances for one rogue state assist the other, but in which nuclear areas, since there are many obstacles to overcome, and about how direct is the assistance.

While this is debatable, assume for one moment that North Korea transfers its ICBM technology to Iran tomorrow. There is still another obstacle to a full-blown North Korean or Iranian nuclear ICBM threat.

North Korea has not yet perfected miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to be placed on one of its ICBMs. But some had thought it might take North Korea years to move from launching short-range missiles to ICBMs, which at a certain stage can hit anywhere on the planet.

The US defense establishment has appeared genuinely surprised that Pyongyang pulled off a successful ICBM launch, only admitting that it was an ICBM after initial skepticism.

If top analysts are saying North Korea is still likely a few years away from miniaturizing a nuclear device, what if North Korea surprises them again by outperforming scientific expectations?

Or maybe North Korea takes a few years, but on-schedule around 2020 pulls off miniaturizing a nuclear bomb to be placed on an ICBM that can hit anywhere.

What will stop North Korea from transferring the technology to Iran? In some ways this is more a special US-European issue than an Israeli issue.

Iran has had missiles that could hit Israel for years. So North Korea developing an ICBM does not necessarily up the threat level to any worse than it already is.

Yet, North Korea achieving miniaturization and passing that on to Iran would get Iran over the greatest major obstacle it has not solved for firing a nuclear missile, as opposed to a conventional missile.

All Iran might need to do at that point would be to start enriching uranium again. Presuming it has improved its centrifuges, which it is allowed to do under the 2015 nuclear deal with the West, some say it might be able to break out in a few months or even a few weeks.

All of this is speculative. North Korea and Iran have both gotten stuck before. Without advances in its centrifuges, Iran may need up to a year to produce enough uranium for a nuclear weapon and it may avoid the risk of breaking the nuclear deal. North Korea may transfer some things to Iran, but choose not to transfer technology to place a nuclear weapon on an ICBM.

But what if it does?

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Will North Korea's long-range missile success help Iran? - The Jerusalem Post

One of the articles in which the New York Times claimed Iran sponsored 9/11.

In its reporting on a dubious lawsuit alleging Iranian meta-involvement in 9/11, the New York Times badly misunderstood the case and maintained for more than three years, in the paper of record, that the government of Iran sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks. The belated correction, issued late Wednesday night on two widely spaced articles on the topic, unceremoniously noted that Iran did not, in fact, help commit the 9/11 attacks.

The correction came after a report about a lawsuit last week mistakenly claimed that Iran sponsored 9/11, something that had not been alleged in the suit. The article (6/29/17, archived) originally read:

The government has agreed to distribute proceeds from the buildings sale, which could bring as much as $1 billion, to the families of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks, including the September 11 attacks.

That 9/11 was an Iranian-sponsored terrorist attack is a spectacular claim, and one that would radically alter the official narrative of 9/11, just casually thrown into an article by the Times. In fact, it isnt even something the lawsuit alleged. The case in question was a class action lawsuit for families of all terrorism victims, and since Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, they were held generically responsible. (The US State Department maintains that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism chiefly because of its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Iraqs Kataib Hizballah, whose attacks have been mainly directed at other combatants.)

Even if this had been what the lawsuit was alleging, its remarkable that reporter Vivian Wang simply took this as fact: No alleged, no lawsuit claimsIrans guilt was simply asserted. And that assertion stood for a week until someone, evidently, got word it was grossly wrong. Late Wednesday night (6/29/17, correction updated 7/5/17), the Times quietly added this correction to the piece:

Correction: July 6, 2017 An article on Friday about a jurys decision to let the federal government seize a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper it says is controlled by Iran overstated Irans responsibility for the September 11 attacks. While a federal court found that Iran had some culpability for the September 11 attacks as a state sponsor of terrorism, it has not been established that Iran sponsored the attacks, which were planned and executed by Al Qaeda. (A similar error occurred in a September 25, 2013, article in the Times.)

Its as if the editors at the Times just got the memo about who was responsible for 9/11. But the week it took to correct this massive error was nothing compared to the close to four years it took to update the very same claim the paper made in September 2013. The original article, by Julie Satow (9/26/13, original archived), read:

Proceeds from a sale would probably be used to pay some of the $6 billion in damages claimed by family members of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, including victims of the 9/11 attacks.

This article, published in the first year of Obamas second term, finally got corrected this week (9/26/13, correction updated 7/5/17), with basically the same correction that ran on last weeks story:

Correction: July 5, 2017 An article on Sept. 25, 2013, about the federal governments efforts to seize a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper it says is controlled by Iran overstated Irans responsibility for the September 11 attacks. While a federal court found that Iran had some culpability for the September 11 attacks as a state sponsor of terrorism, it has not been established that Iran sponsored the attacks, which were planned and executed by Al Qaeda.

The corrections, belated as they were, minimized the defamation of the original articles in a lawyerly manner, conceding only that it has not been established that Iran sponsored the attacks. It has also not been established that Israel or Saudi Arabia or the Bush administration sponsored 9/11, but imagine the New York Times framing allegations against those actors this way. Its unthinkable but, because Iran is an Official Enemy of the United States, it is not subject to the same editorial standards as those in good standing with the US State Department.

The North Korea Law of Journalism

Per the North Korea Law of Journalismwhich states that editorial standards are inversely proportional to a countrys enemy statusthe Times can casually smear Iran as sponsoring the deadliest act of terror on US soil, and its not taken seriously by anyone. Just thrown into an article, forgotten about and only correctedwith no special note by the paperalmost four years later.

One would be curious what the New York Times public editor would say about such a glaring error but the paper eliminated the position a month ago (FAIR.org, 6/1/17). Perhaps the Times in-house media analyst, Jim Rutenberg, who spends much of his time hand-wringing over fake news and RT, could spare a column on how this happened. This is unlikely, since with an Official Enemy, no amount of libelno matter how egregiousmerits a meaningful response from the paper of record.

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After 1379 Days, NYT Corrects Bogus Claim Iran 'Sponsored' 9/11 - FAIR

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Ships Exporting Iranian Oil Go Dark, Raising Sanctions Red Flags Wall Street Journal (subscription) Ships transporting almost a fifth of Iran's oil exports in the second half of last year either turned off their radio-signal tracking systems or gave misleading information about the origin of their cargo, red flags for governments seeking evidence of ...

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Ships Exporting Iranian Oil Go Dark, Raising Sanctions Red Flags - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

They wanted to weaken us, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, an Iranian journalist, said with a chuckle, but now they are losing themselves.

While Iran and Qatar share one of the largest gas fields in the world and have diplomatic relations, Qatar is of little or no strategic value to Iran.

About the most that Tehran has had to say about the situation was a mild remark from President Hassan Rouhani, who told the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, that Irans airspace, sea and ground transport links will always be open to Qatar, our brotherly and neighbor country.

After Mr. Trumps visit, however, Tehran was preparing to face a united bloc of wealthy, militarily well-equipped Persian Gulf nations ready to isolate Iran with the enthusiastic backing of the United States. Saudi Arabia had bought $100 billion worth of American weapons and had formed a close partnership against Tehran with Mr. Trump.

The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel were painting Iran as the primary source of instability in the region, a nation supporting terrorist groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza and fighting on behalf of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The road to ratcheting up the pressure on Iran a sectarian rival hated by the Saudi kingdom for its version of political Islam seemed open.

Then they started fighting among themselves.

A Qatari news report, subsequently dismissed by the Qatari government as fake, was said to have quoted the emir as saying he wanted to ease tensions with Iran. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reacted furiously, starting a diplomatic and trade blockade against the gas-rich nation, handing over the list of 13 demands demand 13: agree to all our demands and even forbidding their citizens to wear Barcelona soccer jerseys because they bear the name of their sponsor, Qatar Airways.

One of those demands is that Qatar close a Turkish military base, which would alienate Turkey, a NATO member and an ally of Saudi Arabia in Syria. Instead of making an Arab NATO, they are only making more enemies, said Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst in Iran. In the end, only America is benefiting, selling all those weapons to those countries.

But even there, the Persian Gulf confrontation is creating some nervous moments for the Pentagon, which is running the Syria air campaign out of a major base in Qatar.

It was a familiar turn of events for the clerics in Tehran, whose regional competition with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries sometimes means just waiting for the Saudis to shoot themselves in the foot, analysts here say.

That strategy seems even more appropriate with the rise of Mohammed bin Salman, 31, the recently named Saudi crown prince, who is developing a reputation for impulsive foreign policy moves that do not work out as planned. He is the architect of the Saudi war in neighboring Yemen, which was supposed to be a blitzkrieg that would end in two days but is dragging into its third year and has caused a horrific humanitarian crisis.

Now, the crown prince is seen as the driving force behind the effort to isolate Qatar.

Meanwhile, Iranian news outlets have gleefully reported how the country is reaping fees for the increased use of its airspace by Qatar Airways.

Over the years, Iran has usually preferred to play the long game, lying low and working with local proxies rather than going for quick victories.

When, for instance, Mr. Assad was threatened by forces backed by Saudi Arabia, Tehran quietly drip fed first hundreds and now thousands of troops into the conflict. It drew on numerous sources, especially the battle-hardened soldiers of the Lebanese Shiite militia, Hezbollah; Shiite militias from Iraq; and Afghans conscripted into the Iranian armed forces.

Qatar cannot expect support beyond the planeloads of food it has already been sent, analysts say. It is cherry season in Iran, so most probably the Qataris are now chewing on those, some people suggest here.

Our interests are best served if there is no war, conflict or any further tensions in our region, said Hossein Sheikholeslam, an adviser to Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. We try to act rationally, because the opponents in the region are young and unripe and irrational in their approach with Qatar.

Watching from the sidelines, while enemies fight, can have benefits. Its like Kuwait, when Saddam Hussein invaded it in 1990 our enemy makes a move and weakens himself, Mr. Taraghi, the hard-line analyst, said.

The only thing Iran did in that case was to open its airspace when Mr. Hussein needed a safe haven for his fighter jets when the United States invaded. He sent over 100 warplanes. The Iranians said, Thank you and never returned them.

We just remained neutral and won, Mr. Taraghi said.

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For Iran, Qatar Crisis Is a Welcome Distraction - New York Times

After three years of trying to strike Iran, the Islamic State (ISIS) finally succeeded in June. The group attacked two highly symbolic and secure targets near Tehran: the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. With this attack, ISIS ticks off its list another important target.

In the summer of 2014, Iranians were panicking as ISIS gained ground in Iraq and its leader declared a caliphate. Iran has grappled with terrorism since the 1940s, but ISIS was a new breed. It controlled swaths of territory not far from Irans porous border with Iraq, had vast resources at its disposal, and deployed a large number of operatives, including foreign fighters. Making matters worse, the group was vehemently anti-Shia and exhibited barbarism rarely seen in modern times.

At first, Tehran played down the concerns: The Iraqi security forces were pushing back ISIS, Iranian state media asserted. But soon, it became clear that ISIS was becoming a bigger threat by the day and that Iran needed to tackle the issue rather than brush it under the rug. To that end, it deployed a counterterrorism force honed by years of experience. And with the country increasing its defense budget to allocate further resources to counterterrorism, this apparatus is likely to become even more robust.

THE ADVENT OF TERRORISM IN IRAN

Modern Irans experience with terrorist groups began in the 1940s, when for a few months during the transition of power between Reza Shah and his son and successor, Mohammad Reza Shah, the state was in turmoil. In the decades that followed, until his regime collapsed in 1979, the Shah was mostly concerned with Islamist, Marxist-Leninist, and Marxist-Maoist groups. Irans military, along with its first intelligence agency, known as the SAVAK, were in charge. With law enforcement agencies, the military and SAVAK conducted surveillance, identified terrorist networks, arrested their members, and collected intelligence to prevent, neutralize, and deter attacks. By the early 1970s, the SAVAK and law

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ISIS Hits Iran - Foreign Affairs