Why Sanctions Won't Work on North Korea

There's a big push to get more and stronger sanctions imposed on North Korea.  The US has been trying to get China to cut off trade with the NK's, and that effort may be moving towards success.  The idea is that North Korea will loss the ability to finance its missile and nuclear weapons programs once its trade is cut off.  It sounds good, but there's a major flaw in the logic of the move towards sanctions.  That flaw is the nuclear agreement with Iran that president Obama signed a few years ago.

Think about it.  Under the JPCOA (as the Iran deal is known), the USA released to Iran roughly $150 billion that had been seized under the sanctions imposed on that country.  That was a massive amount of money.  Iran, however, has supposedly stopped its nuclear weapons program in return.  On the other hand, North Korea and Iran have cooperated for years on weapons development.  That means that it is likely that Iran is supplying the North Koreans with the funds needed for the NK's to complete their missiles and nukes.  When the weapons are ready, Iran can just buy them from the North Koreans.  In other words, the sanctions won't cut off the ability of North Korea to gain the funds needed to continue the weapons programs because the cash we gave to Iran can easily make up all that is needed.