Informative · North Korea

America just said North Korea can keep nukes because Trump likes Kim Jong Un

1 day ago · 30 September 2026Share

President Donald Trump at a podium during his Joint Address to Congress in 2017. — President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a podium during his Joint Address to Congress on February 28, 2017. Shealeah Craighead · Public domain

Donald Trump just said Kim Jong Un can keep his nuclear weapons.

Why? Because they're friends.

Trump said this a few hours ago, at the White House, right after a lunch with AI company executives.

A reporter asked him something simple. Why does North Korea get to have nuclear weapons, when Trump says Iran can't have any?

Here's what Trump said. Kim has a "pretty large" nuclear capacity. And the situation will be fine, as long as Trump himself is around.

He says quote "He respects me and likes me."

So notice what's missing there. No law. No treaty. No security argument.

Just a friendship.

Trump also blamed the presidents before him. He says they let North Korea build its arsenal. He says they didn't do what he did, and could have stopped it.

And this isn't new for Trump. About six weeks ago, he said North Korea has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. About ten days ago, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to South Korean and Japanese officials.

Trump and Kim have actually met before. Three times, during Trump's first term. Singapore. Hanoi. And the border between North and South Korea. All between 2018 and 2019.

Now Trump says he expects to meet Kim again, later this year. There's talk it could happen in November, when Trump is expected in Shenzhen, China, for the APEC summit. The White House hasn't confirmed that part.

Now here's the contrast.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons. It has a nuclear programme. It enriches uranium. But no confirmed weapon.

And the US and Israel have been at war with Iran since the end of February. That's when Operation Epic Fury began, and it killed Iran's supreme leader at the time, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on day one.

The rest of this story is for members.

North and South Korea at night from the International Space Station, showing city lights across the peninsula. — North and South Korea at night, showing the Korean Peninsula lit by city lights from the International Space Station. File photo. NASA · Public domain

That war is now in its seventh month.

On the same day, separately, Trump said something else. He said Iran "will not have a nuclear weapon". And he said the war "will be over with very soon".

Iran's supreme leader now is Mojtaba Khamenei. He's the son of the leader who was killed in February. He hasn't appeared in public since.

JD Vance, the US Vice President, describes Mojtaba Khamenei as very detached, and not involved in running the country day to day.

So think about what's actually happening here.

The US is fighting a war partly over Iran's nuclear programme. At the same time, its own president is saying North Korea's much bigger arsenal is fine. Because of how its leader treats him personally.

Rajan Menon, who studies international relations at the City College of New York, says North Korea's arsenal is not something other countries should get to copy.

Iran hasn't responded to any of this. It's still demanding sanctions relief, and recognition of a memorandum from June, before it reopens the Strait of Hormuz.

And the history cuts both ways. The Obama administration signed a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. It limited Iran's enrichment programme. Trump pulled the US out of that deal in 2018, and brought sanctions back.

North Korea was never in a deal like that. It built its arsenal largely unchallenged.

So what don't we know?

Whether this is a real shift in how the US treats Iran. Or just how Trump talks about a leader who he says likes him.

We also don't know what a Trump-Kim meeting later this year would actually produce.

For now, the position is exactly what Trump said out loud. One country's bomb gets tolerated, because of a friendship. The other country is being fought over.

Comments

None yet

Already a member? Log in.

America just said North Korea can keep nukes because Trump likes Kim Jong Un

Comments

Related reporting

America just gave Iran a deadline and kicked its diplomats out of New York

America just threw Iran's negotiators out of New York and talks have collapsed

Iran just got a written US response to its plan to end the war