North Korea helping Iran develop nuclear weapons

From M & C:

North Korea sent Iran software that could be used to develop nuclear weapons, a German news report said Wednesday, citing unidentified Western intelligence sources.

Pyongyang also sent a team of scientists to Iran in February to train about 20 employees of its Defence Ministry in the operation of the neutron flow simulation program...

Calculating neutron flow in radioactive material allows scientists to determine when a chain reaction, or explosion, would occur. This information is essential for designing nuclear power reactors that do not explode and for building nuclear bombs that do...

On Monday, Iranian news reports said authorities had started transferring the first of 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium to a new underground plant in Fordo, north of Tehran...

North Korea tested nuclear bombs in 2006 and 2009. The isolated communist country is thought to have helped Syria build a nuclear facility that Israel bombed in 2007.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that North Korea and Iran had been exchanging balistic missile technology with one another:

North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

The report said the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighboring third country."

That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The report will likely deepen suspicions about North Korean cooperation with Iran and heighten concerns about China's commitment to enforcing the sanctions against Tehran and Pyongyang due to their nuclear programs, envoys told Reuters.