Iran and North Korea have long cooperated in some aspects of their missile development and probably in some aspects of their nuclear programs as well. Some of the details of this cooperation are clear, but many are not—at least at the open-source level of data available outside the intelligence community. This raises critical issues in evaluating the progress each country is making in the development of its nuclear forces, and how much cooperation they still have in shaping their missile forces.

It also raises the issue of how possible it is to establish effective arms-control efforts and stable structures of deterrence when key aspects of each country’s military development can be affected by the actions of a distant and very different power. Containing, deterring, and defeating either Iran or North Korea is difficult enough when each nation is treated separately. It becomes far more difficult to the extent they are cooperating to develop missile and nuclear forces.

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