Bruce E. Bechtol, Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, writes, “Iran is North Korea’s oldest and most profitable purchaser of ballistic missiles and ballistic missile technology… any missile test by North Korea should be assessed not only for its potential should a missile be launched from the North Korean landmass, but what it would mean if such a missile was launched from the Middle East – and who it would threaten.”

Sourabh Gupta, Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., writes, “with each successive adjustment of the legal framework of Japan’s security policy, an even greater separation has tended to set in between the original Article 9 aspiration of a force posture that is non-coercive and built around minimal use of force in defense of exclusively individual self-defense ends, and its actual practice on the ground.”

Hui Zhang, Research Associate in the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, writes, “From China’s perspective, the first step should be taken by the side with the least to lose. This is not North Korea… Washington should take the first step that will eventually lead to North Korean denuclearisation.”