The North Korean origins of Iran’s rocket strike capability against Israel

In the aftermath of a lethal air strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus on Apr. 1, which was quickly widely attributed to the Israeli Air Force, Tehran’s pledges to retaliate have led both local and international media to highlight the range of missile classes the country has capable of striking Israeli territory. The country has a history of launching missile strikes in response to the killing of its officials or attacks on its territory, with the most notable example in recent years being the strikes launched against U.S. military bases in Iraq on Jan. 8, 2020, causing 109 American casualties. This represented a response to the killing of Iran’s most decorated military official Major General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike six days prior. While Iran’s capability to engage targets in Israel is well established, with the country having also conducted lengthy drone reconnaissance operations in Israeli airspace in the past, less well known is how this capability was first obtained, the central role played by the North Korean defense sector, and how it tied into the origins of Pyongyang’s special relationship with Tehran.

Alongside Egypt, Iran became one of the first clients for North Korean ballistic missiles in the early 1980s and purchased several hundred Hwasong-5 missiles during the Iran-Iraq War, before advancing this relationship further with the acquisition of the longer ranged Hwasong-6 and beginning to seek domestic license production of the Korean missiles. Where both the Hwasong-5 and Hwasong-6 were close derivatives of the Soviet Scud-B, with these designated Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 in Iran, in the early 1990s North Korea completed development of a unique and significantly larger missile class designated Hwasong-7. While using reverse engineered Scud technologies, the missile had five times the range of the Hwasong-5 and Scud-B allowing it to engage targets up to 1,500 kilometers away, with this capability highly valued to target American military facilities in Japan. This marked the first time that the Korean People’s Army could effectively threaten targets beyond the Korean Peninsula, which had critical wartime implications due to Japan’s central role as a staging ground for possible American military operations in Korea. 

The Hwasong-7, better known in the West as the Rodong-1, made a formidable show of force on May 29, 1993, when one was launched into the Sea of Japan, and demonstrated high precision impacting close to a target buoy hundreds of kilometers away. The missile’s introduction came at a time of growing concerns in the West regarding Pyongyang’s possible development of nuclear weapons, and coincided with a period of high tensions with Washington. The Bill Clinton administration the following year came close to ordering a military campaign against North Korea, which analysts widely credited the country’s missile capabilities as a leading factor in having deterred. While the Hwasong-7 was a game changer for North Korea’s missile deterrent capabilities, and marked the beginning of a new era for the country’s strike capabilities culminating 24 years later in the acquiring of a viable ICBM, the missile was also highly attractive to international clients – in particular Iran and Pakistan. 

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, Iran faced growing hurdles impeding the modernization of its conventional forces, with the United States intervening to effectively prevent arms acquisitions from Soviet successor states. The 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin Agreement bound Moscow to cut off existing arms supply contracts to Iran and refrain from signing new ones, ending a budding military relationship that began in 1989, which is still far from having fully recovered. Initially promising Iranian efforts to acquire MiG-29 fighters from Moldova fell through when the United States applied political pressure on Chișinău, and went as far as to purchase the Soviet built jets for its own fleet to deny them to Iran. In the post-Cold War era North Korea remained far less susceptible to Western pressure over arms sales than Soviet successor states, while ballistic missiles provided an effective means of deterring larger militaries, including the United States, asymmetrically. 

While a primary benefit of the Hwasong-7 for Iran was that it would facilitate retaliation against American military installations throughout the Middle East should the U.S. attempt a military attack, as well as attacks on key oil infrastructure in the Gulf with massive economic repercussions, the missile was also valued for its ability to reach Israeli targets. This took on new importance after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, after which Israel came to view Iran as its primary regional adversary. The Israeli Air Force retained considerable assets capable of striking Iranian targets, ranging from new F-15I fighters to Jericho II ballistic missiles, both of which can deliver either conventional or nuclear strikes.

The ability to strike Israel had also been a goal of Iraq’s ballistic missile program, although Iraqi efforts to modify Soviet-supplied Scud missiles for this purpose were far from successful. The AI Hussein missile had doubled its range to 600 kilometers, but carried very small warheads due to the need to carry extra fuel. Its accuracy was greatly reduced, especially in the sparsely populated Middle East. The Hwasong-7 was a far more effective solution to the need for extended range, as its much larger size allowed for both a larger payload and more fuel, while its accuracy was improved over that of Scud missiles. Although the ability to achieve much greater ranges with more compact missiles had been demonstrated in the Soviet Union and would emerge in North Korea in later years, the Scud technologies of the time were insufficient to develop an efficient longer-range missile.

Considerable technology transfer suspected between two countries

The possible sale of the Hwasong-7 and its technologies to Iran in the early 1990s led to significant American threats against both countries and Israeli diplomatic overtures to Pyongyang, although neither succeeded in preventing the transfer. For North Korea, the sale served three primary purposes, including providing the country with substantial and much-needed revenue after its trade with the former Soviet bloc was effectively cut off, while further strengthening security ties with Iran and challenging Western security interests in the Middle East. The missile was subsequently manufactured under license in Iran under the designation Shahab-3, with an estimated 50 launchers and several hundred missiles in service by the late 2000s.

In parallel to the modernization of the Hwasong-7 in North Korea, the Shahab-3 would also benefit from significant improvements thought to have been developed jointly by the two countries. Among these were improved guidance capabilities, introduction of maneuverable reentry vehicles, and use of a new rocket-nozzle control system, with many of these upgrades intended to increase survivability against Western and Israeli missile defense systems. Enhanced derivatives of the Shahab-3 have included the Ghadr-110 and Emad, the latter unveiled in 2015, with both boasting significantly extended ranges. Israeli intelligence sources reported that the Shahab-3 saw one combat deployment, and was used on June 18, 2017, for retaliatory strikes against Islamic State jihadist insurgents in Syria after terror attacks on Iranian targets, demonstrating high precision.

North Korea would continue to play a central role in the modernization of Iran’s longer ranged missile capabilities, with unconfirmed U.S. reports indicating that the Hwasong-10 ballistic missile was tested in Iran as early as the mid-2000s. This intermediate range ballistic missile could engage targets over twice as far as the Hwasong-7, with enhanced variants in the 2010s providing North Korea with its first known strike capability against targets on Guam. Its development became a priority target for American “left of launch” electronic sabotage efforts under the Obama administration. While North Korea’s intermediate range arsenal has moved two generations past the Hwasong-10, with the Hwasong-12 first launched in 2017 and the Hwasong-16B in April 2024, the Iranian Khoramshahr series of ballistic missiles continue to play a central role in the country’s arsenal and are widely reported to be based on Hwasong-10 technologies. 

In what may be the latest development in missile technology sharing between the two U.S. adversaries, Iran’s claims to have developed a hypersonic glide vehicle for its longer ranged missiles closely followed North Korea’s development of missiles with such vehicles domestically. This would follow a long history of North Korea exporting countermeasures to enemy air defenses to enhance the missile arsenals of both Iran and its close strategic partner Syria. With post-Soviet Russia having played a much more limited role in the Middle East – and managing its arms exports far more carefully to avoid conflicting with Israeli interests – North Korean arms exports would serve to counterbalance the considerable arms and technology transfers from the Western world to Israel from the 1990s. The result has been success in both significantly shifting the regional balance of power, and in gaining major markets for its equipment.