North Korea announced yesterday that it was placing its military on high alert. It warnedthe United States of “disastrous consequences” and an “unexpected horrible disaster” after the U.S. moved naval assets, including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port for what officials described as a routine trilateral search and rescue drill with the South Korea and Japanese navies.

Meanwhile officials from Souel confirmed yesterday the North Koreans have reactivated their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Pyongyang’s regional posture and its nuclear program have received renewed atttention in recent weeks. Analysts have repeatedly highlighting similarities between Iran’s current diplomatic strategy and the playbook that North Korea used to stall for time while it dashed across the nuclear finish line. This week Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, extensively documented the parallels:

In other words, the North Korean nuclear playbook didn’t just work for that first nuclear test in 2006. It is still working. North Korea’s people are hungry and oppressed, the Pyongyang regime is laboring under sanctions, but having cheated its way through a series of deals going all the way back to the nuclear freeze of the 1994 Agreed Framework under President Clinton, North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un not only has a nuclear weapons program, but appears to be honing the weapons.

This warning is urgent. Not only does North Korea offer terror-sponsoring Iran a model of how to get away with going nuclear, but the two have plenty of direct dealings. Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, North Korea has been one of Iran’s closest allies. This partnership is based on a shared hostility toward the U.S. and other free societies, and has long been cemented by a neat match between North Korea’s weapons industry and need for money, and Iran’s oil wealth and desire for weapons.

Iran has extensively funded North Korea’s military program. The Washington Post went so far last March as to speculate that Pyongyang may have used Iranian materials for a nuclear bomb it detonated in February.

Ties between the two rogue regimes rogue regimes go beyond military cooperation A recent meeting of labor ministers from the two countries sought to deepen their alliance across the board.

[Photo: World News / YouTube]