Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was accused by the U.S. of trading nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea as long ago as the 1990s. Khan died recently of Covid at the age of 85.
American bases around Iran, from The Bullet website.
This trade may include various kinds of submarines but North Korea's subs are relatively unlikely to be convincing military hardware since they have noisy diesel engines.
In a 30-year career, Kim Kuk-song rose to the top ranks of North Korea's powerful spy agencies, but he fled the country in 2014, fearing that he was about to be purged.
Mr Kim says North Korea was so desperate for foreign currency that at one stage it even set up a state run crystal meth lab. He claims that arms trading with Iran was so successful that North Korea's deputy director in Iran would boast about summoning the Iranians to his swimming pool to do business, the BBC report says.
Professor Andrei Lankov, a world leading expert on Iran, says North Korean weapons deals with Iran have been an open secret since the 1980s and even included ballistic missiles.
Quite clearly America's support for the overthrow of Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi will haunt the world for many decades to come. Ghaddafi had agreed to give up his nuclear programme in December 2003.
If he had not done that he might well still be alive and ruling Libya, a lesson tyrants, despots and revolutionaries everywhere have clearly understood.
Many of the Middle East potentates are already (according to the jargon used by specialists in the field) nuclear ready. This means that they could quickly become nuclear powers should there be a pressing need.