CANADA PERSPECTIVE

Ottawa reads the sequence with its own angle: Financial Post (via Bloomberg) quotes Rafael Grossi, IAEA chief, who "earlier this year warned that North Korea has significantly increased its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, and has intensified activity across key facilities." The passage that changes the reading: "With Iran's nuclear ambitions effectively being curtailed, North Korea appears determined to emphasize that it is already a de facto nuclear-armed state." This juxtaposition, by Yang Moo-jin (University of North Korean Studies, Seoul), gives the Canadian reader an original reading frame: Kim acts not only relative to Xi or Trump, but also relative to Tehran's fate. If Iran has been militarily contained (Israeli strikes April-May 2026, internal unrest, ongoing US-Iran negotiations), Pyongyang positions itself not to suffer the same fate by declaring itself an "irreversible de facto nuclear state." Financial Post recalls the Xi 2019 precedent: at the time, Xi told Kim that "the world wanted him to make progress in nuclear talks with the US." The contrast with today is striking: this time Xi will come without a public moratorium demand. The tone of Chinese diplomacy is changing.