Donald Trump Says North Korea Is “No Longer A Nuclear Threat”

President Donald Trump is claiming on Twitter that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat with Pyongyang’s significant weapons arsenal.

Though the recently signed statement between the two nations seems like a step in the right direction, it does not specify a timeline or verification procedures to ensure that North Korea actually abandons its nuclear program. In comparison, the Iran Nuclear Deal, signed by former President Barack Obama and other European nations, detailed steps about how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would monitor Iran’s denuclearization and have access to inspect any sites they deemed suspicious.

Rep. Adam Schiff mocked Trump, saying on Twitter, “One trip and it’s ‘mission accomplished,’ Mr. President? North Korea is a real and present threat,” Schiff said. “So is a dangerously naive president.”

The president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass said on Twitter that the summit changed nothing.

North Korea has repeatedly promised to denuclearize in the past and failed to follow through. In 1994, Kim Jong Il said North Korea would halt plutonium production, but the country was later discovered to have been enriching uranium from then until 2002. In 2012, North Korea agreed to suspend nuclear tests in exchange for food aid, then reversed course two weeks later.

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Concerns about North Korean missiles and nuclear weapons reached a peak last year, during Trump’s first year in office, as the North conducted more tests and Trump and Kim aimed ever-more fiery rhetoric at each other.

“You can’t ensure anything,” Trump said in a press conference on Tuesday after the summit. “All I can say is they want to make a deal. That’s what I do. My whole life has been deals.”

Article by Steven Abendroth