Since the fall of the Assad regime, the Israeli Air Force has launched attacks on numerous strategic military facilities. Included among these facilities are chemical weapons facilities and missile sites. It is established in open sources that these facilities are for either the development or weaponization of chemical weapons or for the matching up of these weapons with their launching platforms—typically Scud missiles or 122MM multiple rocket launchers. What we are not seeing in the press, for the most part, is the North Korea connection. In fact, the Damascus regime would not have the weapons or the missiles or even most of the multiple rocket launchers (in other words, both the weapons and the platforms) without one of their key suppliers: Pyongyang.

North Korea began selling chemical weapons capabilities to the Syrians at least as early as the early 1990s. In fact, North Korean scientists and technicians assisted the Syrians in developing several of their chemical weapons facilities. In 2005, the Syrians reportedly used North Korean-provided Scud missiles to test North Korean-provided air-burst chemical weapons.

The North Koreans did not stop there. Throughout the Syrian Civil War, the North Koreans continued to assist Syria with its chemical weapons program. A UN Panel of Experts Report from March 2018 stated that there were at least thirty-nine illicit shipments from North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017—shipments that included items such as “acid-resistant tiles,” “valves, welded pipes (23 tons), stainless steel seamless pipes (27 tons) and cables.” 

In other words, despite Syria’s claims that it ended its chemical weapons program in 2013, it did not. Its chief supplier was North Korea. Many of these weapons remained in Syria after the civil war subsided, and the Syrians (along with Iranians and North Koreans) were even assisting Hezbollah in the development and storage of these weapons during 2022. Thus, Israel’s interest in destroying Syria’s chemical weapons facilities now that they are falling into the hands of a radical and unpredictable government is quite compelling.

North Korea began proliferating Scud-C missiles to Syria after the first Gulf War in 1991. The North Koreans and the Syrians entered into a deal where Pyongyang would deliver at least 150 Scud-C missiles for the price of $500 million. The first missiles reportedly arrived in early 1991 and also included launchers. Other shipments arrived throughout the year and the following year and Syria eventually received close to the number of missiles they had paid for from the North Koreans. The North Koreans also built fabrication facilities for the Syrians for Scud-C missiles. Of course, these facilities could not operate without North Korean parts and North Korean technical assistance.

North Korea also sold Scud-D ballistic missiles to Syria. Early tests were detected in 2000, 2005, and 2007. Some testing also included the use of live chemical munitions. The first known use of the Scud-D missiles in the Syrian Civil War was in 2012, when the Syrian army used it against insurgents. This proved successful and thus deadly for opponents of the Syrian army.

There is a strong possibility that North Korea supplied, then re-supplied the Syrian military with chemical weapons, the platforms to carry them (Scud C, D, and 122-mm multiple rocket launchers), and the necessary materials to maintain an “industry” that could continue to upgrade and produce these weapons. This was happening before the early stages of the civil war and was ongoing until at least 2022. Thus, the necessity of destroying these facilities and weapons systems cannot be doubted. Although the Assad regime never directly attacked Israel with these systems, there is no such guarantee for Israel’s security now with a new government in Damascus.

And what does this mean for the North Koreans? Perhaps most importantly, it means the loss of an important consumer of both conventional and unconventional weapons. Syria has been a consumer of North Korean systems since roughly the late 1960s. That is over now. The same might be said for both Hezbollah and Hamas. Both used North Korean weapons against Israel. Both used North Korean assistance to build important underground facilities and tunnels (now largely destroyed). 

This leads to the question, will these two entities now try to reconstitute themselves with the support of the North Koreans (and others, including Iran)? One hopes that this outcome can be prevented, but it will take definitive action. With a key weapons consumer now out of power, North Korea will once again be looking to “sell its wares” throughout the Middle East.

About the Author: 

Dr. Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. is a professor of Political Science at Angelo State University. He is also the President of the International Council on Korean Studies and a fellow at the Institute for Korean-American Studies. He is the author of five books dealing with North Korea. His latest work is entitled North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa.

Image: Shutterstock.