North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a training site for snipers in an unidentified location of North Korea, Tuesday, in this photo released Thursday by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. Yonhap

U.S. strikes on Iran, coupled with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s vow to “deal with” Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and that the effort would send “plenty of signals,” were intended not only to pressure Iran but also to broadcast American resolve more broadly, officials said. In that context, analysts say North Korea is likely watching with a mix of heightened anxiety and reinforced determination to retain its own nuclear arsenal.

Hegseth said Wednesday (local time) that Washington’s operation in Iran targets its “nuclear ambitions” and “will send plenty of signals in the process” — a message analysts in Seoul say was deliberately broad and closely watched in North Korea. This came a day after Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby described North Korean and Russian nuclear weapons as the “primary existential threat” facing Washington, signaling a hardening line on nuclear dangers in both countries.

For Kim Jong-un, the most immediate lesson from the U.S. operations in Venezuela and Iran — and the latest warnings out of Washington — is that the U.S. capability and willingness to remove hostile leaders has moved from theory to practice, according to Ko Myong-hyun, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a state-funded think tank.

“The decapitation capabilities the U.S. has just shown in Venezuela and Iran are, in fact, real and powerful,” Ko told The Korea Times. “For a regime built around protecting the leader above all else, that makes the threat feel much more real in Pyongyang.”

Ko sees Hegseth’s comments as closely aligned with the Pentagon’s latest National Defense Strategy, which groups China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in an escalating threat sequence. This underpins a harder institutional posture toward Pyongyang even as Trump continues to float the idea of another summit, he added.

Ko also said all this changes the diplomatic risk for Kim attached to any future summit with Trump. Before the U.S. strikes, Kim could treat such a meeting partly as political theater, with denuclearization demands seen as negotiable demands.

“Now, any U.S. demand for denuclearization will be heard less as a normal request and more as a threat,” he said.

Two F/A-18 Super Hornets launch from the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), Tuesday, in support of Operation Epic Fury, in this U.S. Navy handout photo released by U.S. Central Command public affairs. AFP-Yonhap

Cha Du-hyeogn, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank, said the North’s elites may be drawing “two conflicting lessons at the same time.”

Source: Korea Times News