OOPS!

North Korean Warship Tough To Salvage After Launch Failure – Analysis

North Korea's Choe Hyon destroyer. Photo Credit: KCNA, Wikipedia Commons

 May 24, 2025

By RFA

By Han Do-hyung and Jaewoo Park 

A newly built North Korean destroyer that was damaged during a launch attempt this week may have suffered irreparable harm, analysts said, as the communist nation’s authorities moved to arrest those responsible.

According to a Thursday report from the Beyond Parallel project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, the ship “may ultimately prove to be a complete loss.”

The Washington-based think tank said the launch failure is “an embarrassment to (leader) Kim Jong Un and North Korea’s Korean People’s Navy,” and would disrupt Kim’s plans to turn the navy from a coastal defense force to a blue-water one, capable of “strategic offensive operations.”

The attempted launch of North Korea’s second Choe Hyon-class guided missile destroyer went awry at the Hambuk (Chongjin) Shipyard on Wednesday. The 5,000 ton warship tipped sideways, leaving one side of its hull submerged.

Kim called it a “grave and unacceptable accident” and a “serious criminal act,” the state-run news agency reported Thursday.

CSIS said the vessel’s stern appears to have swung into the harbor after wheeled bogies supporting the destroyer’s frame reportedly slid off their tracks, while the bow remained stuck on the shipyard’s side slipway.

Satellite imagery shows the warship now covered in blue tarpaulins and surrounded by crane barges and support vessels, with multiple cranes stationed onshore.

‘Hasty and flawed launch’

North Korea acknowledged the launch failure, attributing it to “inexperienced command and operational carelessness.” The Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, reported that holes in parts of the warship’s bottom disrupted its balance, suggesting a possible hull breach during the failed launch.

Outside military experts raised doubts about the vessel’s survivability. Moon Keun-sik, a former South Korean submarine captain and visiting professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, told Radio Free Asia that the destroyer appeared to have fully capsized. He said the severe tilt likely indicates a significant hull breach, possibly allowing seawater to reach inside and disable the engine.

While the side-launch method that was used on Wednesday is not technically demanding, Moon said that North Korea’s rush to complete the launch may have compromised safety. He said that repairs could take longer than Pyongyang has claimed.

“The damage to the rear could be extensive,” Moon said. “If saltwater entered the engine compartment, the consequences could be severe. It seems the regime was under pressure to showcase its naval capabilities and cooperation with Russia, which likely led to a hasty and ultimately flawed launch.”

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. James Fanell, who previously served as the chief of intelligence for the U.S. 7th Fleet and Pacific Fleet, told RFA that the incident may reflect internal pressures within North Korea’s naval development program. 

“It is reported the North Korean Navy launched their first new destroyer using the floating dry-dock method, which worked well,” he said. “Why Hambuk Shipyard was used to launch the second destroyer via the side-way gravitational method could be a reflection of the pressure Kim Jong Un has put on the North Korean [military] to more rapidly grow the size of the North Korean Navy.”

In response to the failure, Kim Jong Un issued harsh criticism, targeting multiple institutions, including the Munitions Industry Department, the State Academy of Sciences, Kim Chaek University of Technology, and the Central Ship Design Institute, North Korean state media reported.

North Korea now says no holes in ship’s bottom

While North Korea has shown uncharacteristic candor in reporting the mishap at all, its state media appeared to downplay the extent of the damage. After initially acknowledging a hull breach, KCNA said Friday that inspections found “no holes in the ship’s bottom” and only limited seawater intrusion through an aft compartment.

The North Korean government estimated that it would take two to three days to drain the flooded compartments and separate the bow from the slipway to restore balance to the warship. Repairing the starboard hull would then require approximately 10 additional days.

On Thursday, an official at South Korea’s Ministry of Unification told reporters in Seoul that Kim’s reported instruction to repair the destroyer before a June plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party suggests the damage may not be irrecoverable.

Experts remain unconvinced. The future of the vessel — and of Kim’s timeline for transforming the navy into a blue-water force —now appears uncertain.

Shipyard manager questioned

KCNA reported on Friday that an official investigation team composed of government agencies and technical experts has begun a full-scale probe into the launch failure.

KCNA said that based on preliminary findings, the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Military Commission has instructed legal authorities to arrest individuals deemed clearly responsible for the incident. The Chongjin shipyard’s general manager, Hong Gil-ho, was summoned for questioning on Thursday, it said.

RFA

Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Content used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

Why Are Some Rocks On The Moon Highly Magnetic? MIT Scientists May Have An Answer

 May 24, 2025  

By Eurasia Review

Where did the moon’s magnetism go? Scientists have puzzled over this question for decades, ever since orbiting spacecraft picked up signs of a high magnetic field in lunar surface rocks. The moon itself has no inherent magnetism today.  

Now, MIT scientists may have solved the mystery. They propose that a combination of an ancient, weak magnetic field and a large, plasma-generating impact may have temporarily created a strong magnetic field, concentrated on the far side of the moon. 

In a study appearing in the journal Science Advances, the researchers show through detailed simulations that an impact, such as from a large asteroid, could have generated a cloud of ionized particles that briefly enveloped the moon. This plasma would have streamed around the moon and concentrated at the opposite location from the initial impact. There, the plasma would have interacted with and momentarily amplified the moon’s weak magnetic field. Any rocks in the region could have recorded signs of the heightened magnetism before the field quickly died away. 

This combination of events could explain the presence of highly magnetic rocks detected in a region near the south pole, on the moon’s far side. As it happens, one of the largest impact basins — the Imbrium basin — is located in the exact opposite spot on the near side of the moon. The researchers suspect that whatever made that impact likely released the cloud of plasma that kicked off the scenario in their simulations.  

“There are large parts of lunar magnetism that are still unexplained,” says lead author Isaac Narrett, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But the majority of the strong magnetic fields that are measured by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by this process — especially on the far side of the moon.”

Narrett’s co-authors include Rona Oran and Benjamin Weiss at MIT, along with Katarina Miljkovic at Curtin University, Yuxi Chen and Gábor Tóth at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Elias Mansbach PhD ’24 at Cambridge University. Nuno Loureiro, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, also contributed insights and advice.

Beyond the sun

Scientists have known for decades that the moon holds remnants of a strong magnetic field. Samples from the surface of the moon, returned by astronauts on NASA’s Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s, as well as global measurements of the moon taken remotely by orbiting spacecraft, show signs of remnant magnetism in surface rocks, especially on the far side of the moon. 

The typical explanation for surface magnetism is a global magnetic field, generated by an internal “dynamo,” or a core of molten, churning material. The Earth today generates a magnetic field through a dynamo process, and it’s thought that the moon once may have done the same, though its much smaller core would have produced a much weaker magnetic field that may not explain the highly magnetized rocks observed, particularly on the moon’s far side. 

An alternative hypothesis that scientists have tested from time to time involves a giant impact that generated plasma, which in turn amplified any weak magnetic field. In 2020, Oran and Weiss tested this hypothesis with simulations of a giant impact on the moon, in combination with the solar-generated magnetic field, which is weak as it stretches out to the Earth and moon. 

In simulations, they tested whether an impact to the moon could amplify such a solar field, enough to explain the highly magnetic measurements of surface rocks. It turned out that it wasn’t, and their results seemed to rule out plasma-induced impacts as playing a role in the moon’s missing magnetism. 

A spike and a jitter

But in their new study, the researchers took a different tack. Instead of accounting for the sun’s magnetic field, they assumed that the moon once hosted a dynamo that produced a magnetic field of its own, albeit a weak one. Given the size of its core, they estimated that such a field would have been about 1 microtesla, or 50 times weaker than the Earth’s field today. 

From this starting point, the researchers simulated a large impact to the moon’s surface, similar to what would have created the Imbrium basin, on the moon’s near side. Using impact simulations from Katarina Miljkovic, the team then simulated the cloud of plasma that such an impact would have generated as the force of the impact vaporized the surface material. They adapted a second code, developed by collaborators at the University of Michigan, to simulate how the resulting plasma would flow and interact with the moon’s weak magnetic field. 

These simulations showed that as a plasma cloud arose from the impact, some of it would have expanded into space, while the rest would stream around the moon and concentrate on the opposite side. There, the plasma would have compressed and briefly amplified the moon’s weak magnetic field. This entire process, from the moment the magnetic field was amplified to the time that it decays back to baseline, would have been incredibly fast — somewhere around 40 minutes, Narrett says. 

Would this brief window have been enough for surrounding rocks to record the momentary magnetic spike? The researchers say, yes, with some help from another, impact-related effect. 

They found that an Imbrium-scale impact would have sent a pressure wave through the moon, similar to a seismic shock. These waves would have converged to the other side, where the shock would have “jittered” the surrounding rocks, briefly unsettling the rocks’ electrons — the subatomic particles that naturally orient their spins to any external magnetic field. The researchers suspect the rocks were shocked just as the impact’s plasma amplified the moon’s magnetic field. As the rocks’ electrons settled back, they assumed a new orientation, in line with the momentary high magnetic field. 

“It’s as if you throw a 52-card deck in the air, in a magnetic field, and each card has a compass needle,” Weiss says. “When the cards settle back to the ground, they do so in a new orientation. That’s essentially the magnetization process.”

The researchers say this combination of a dynamo plus a large impact, coupled with the impact’s shockwave, is enough to explain the moon’s highly magnetized surface rocks — particularly on the far side. One way to know for sure is to directly sample the rocks for signs of shock, and high magnetism. This could be a possibility, as the rocks lie on the far side, near the lunar south pole, where missions such as NASA’s Artemis program plan to explore. 

“For several decades, there’s been sort of a conundrum over the moon’s magnetism — is it from impacts or is it from a dynamo?” Oran says. “And here we’re saying, it’s a little bit of both. And it’s a testable hypothesis, which is nice.”

The team’s simulations were carried out using the MIT SuperCloud. This research was supported, in part, by NASA. 

Eurasia Review is an independent Journal that provides a venue for analysts and experts to disseminate content on a wide-range of subjects that are often overlooked or under-represented by Western dominated media.

 

Iran To Resume Drilling For Oil And Gas On Caspian Seabed – OpEd

Iran flag and oil platform. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 May 24, 2025

By Paul Goble

Tehran has announced that it will resume drilling for oil and gas in the Caspian. It stopped such drilling in 1997 and ended its deep-water petroleum operations on that sea in 2014, but it now hopes to actively exploit the more than 600 million barrels of oil and 56.6 billion cubic meters of gas under the seabed in its sector of the Caspian.

In making this announcement, the Iranian oil ministry said that it was open to international cooperation and investment, an indication that this new effort will be expensive and that Iran by itself will have a difficult time achieving its goals (https://casp-geo.ru/iran-vozobnovil-burenie-na-kaspii-spustya-30-let/).

This move is likely to create conflicts between Iran, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, on the other, which already have developed Caspian fields near where the Iranians plan to drill (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/05/azerbaijan-expanding-naval-cooperation.html); and it may prompt Tehran to finally ratify the 2018 convention on the division of the sea to defend its claims (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/moscow-tries-to-work-around-tehrans.html).

In both cases, it is likely that Iran will seek to expand its naval capacities there, possibly with the help of the Russian Federation, something that will further exacerbate tensions on the Caspian (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html and jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).  

Paul Goble

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .

Siege Politics: Netanyahu’s Crisis-Driven Grip On Power – OpEd

 May 24, 2025

By Dr. Imran Khalid

By now, it should surprise no one that Benjamin Netanyahu prefers the echo chamber of his own making to the international chorus demanding accountability. The Israeli prime minister, clinging to office as tenaciously as he clings to delusion, has managed to place himself among the most cynically manipulative leaders of our time, a man who governs not by vision, but by vindictiveness.

Once vaunted as a statesman in the mold of Churchill, Netanyahu now more closely resembles a bunker-dwelling autocrat, lashing out at allies and adversaries alike as his credibility collapses under the weight of his own contradictions. His latest tirade, this time aimed at French President Emmanuel Macron, is emblematic of a broader pattern: weaponizing moral outrage to deflect from moral bankruptcy.

Macron’s offense? A tepid acknowledgment of Gaza’s humanitarian collapse, describing Israel’s blockade as “shameful.” In Netanyahu’s world, even this mild reproach is grounds for hysteria. Accusing Macron of trafficking in “blood libels”—a grotesque invocation that trivializes historical trauma—Netanyahu displayed once again his uncanny ability to turn every diplomatic encounter into an operatic display of self-pity and belligerence.

That the French president stopped short of sanctions, or even a formal condemnation, makes Netanyahu’s outburst all the more absurd. No call for a ceasefire, no explicit criticism of military tactics, just an acknowledgment of the obvious: Gaza is a humanitarian disaster zone, engineered by policies that bear Netanyahu’s fingerprints at every stage.

This, however, is hardly uncharted territory for “King Bibi.” In October, Macron had the audacity to suggest halting weapons sales to Israel, specifically those used to flatten densely populated areas in Gaza. Netanyahu’s retort was a sneering video statement branding Macron a disgrace. And when the French leader reminded him that Israel’s very existence owes much to a UN resolution, Netanyahu responded not with gratitude but with belligerence, boasting that the state was born “in blood,” not in diplomacy, and throwing in a swipe at France’s Vichy past for good measure.

Such eruptions are more than a rhetorical style. They are a political strategy. Netanyahu thrives in crisis, not to resolve it but to prolong it, using chaos as a shield against the ever-looming specter of his own political demise. With corruption charges still dogging him and public opinion slipping, he has fashioned Gaza into both a battlefield and a diversion.

The diplomatic fraying with France is hardly an isolated event. Israeli police stormed a French-owned church compound in Jerusalem last year, detaining consular staff. Macron, in turn, floated the idea of formally recognizing a Palestinian state, a proposal backed by more than 140 countries. Netanyahu’s response was to label the move a “huge prize for terror,” as though empowering the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, somehow played into the hands of extremism. Logic, of course, has never been Netanyahu’s preferred instrument. Fear is.

Enter Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son and Twitter provocateur-in-chief. Never far from a tantrum, Yair flailed at France’s colonial past, citing Corsica and New Caledonia in a jumbled attempt at moral equivalence. Netanyahu senior distanced himself from the tone, not the content, allowing his son to speak the unspeakable while feigning dignity. It was a family affair in strategic impudence.

Nor is Netanyahu’s estrangement limited to Europe. In 2011, then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy was caught on a hot mic telling Barack Obama, “I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.” Obama replied, “You may be sick of him, but I have to deal with him every day.” That bipartisan distaste spans decades, from Bill Clinton’s wearied attempts at peace talks to George W. Bush’s frustration with his obstructionism, right up to Joe Biden’s belated recognition that Bibi is not a partner, but a problem.

Even Donald Trump, Netanyahu’s most ardent enabler, appears to be losing patience. After Netanyahu rejected a U.S.-Qatari-Egyptian ceasefire deal in March—a proposal backed not only by the Trump administration but by most Israeli citizens and families of hostages—Trump’s camp began to murmur its discontent. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly told Netanyahu that prolonging the war was not only immoral but strategically suicidal. And when Washington secured the release of the last American hostage through third-party negotiations, Netanyahu was not only excluded, he was rendered irrelevant.

For a man whose political mythology has long hinged on being indispensable to Israel’s security, this sidelining must have stung. But it was also richly earned. Netanyahu’s Gaza policy—a grotesque mixture of collective punishment, siege tactics, and performative defiance—has brought neither peace nor security. It has only further isolated Israel on the world stage while exacting an unfathomable human cost on Palestinians and deepening divisions within Israeli society.

Netanyahu has weaponized the war to delay his own reckoning. Every rejection of ceasefire terms, every snub of international mediation, buys him more time in power—or so he believes. But the world, and increasingly his own electorate, is beginning to see through the act.

The irony is almost Shakespearean. A man once hailed as the architect of Israel’s international legitimacy now finds himself presiding over its diplomatic erosion. Far from defending the state, Netanyahu is diminishing it, reducing its foreign policy to grievance and paranoia, and treating criticism as betrayal rather than opportunity.

At a time when global challenges—economic fragmentation, rising authoritarianism, climate emergency—demand mature and imaginative leadership, Netanyahu offers none. Instead, he bellows from the balcony, lashes out at allies, and casts every critic as a traitor.

Churchill, he is not. He is not even Begin. He is a leader in free fall, dragging his country with him, increasingly abandoned by allies, and yet still believing himself the indispensable man. The tragedy is not only his. It belongs to Israel—and to all those, Palestinian and Israeli alike, who must live with the consequences of his delusions.

• This article was published at FPIF

Dr. Imran Khalid

Dr. Imran Khalid is a geostrategic analyst and columnist on international affairs. His work has been widely published by prestigious international news organizations and journals.

 

Lebanese Army To Begin Disarming Palestinians In Beirut Camps In Mid-June

 May 24, 2025 By Arab News

By Najia Houssari

The joint Lebanese-Palestinian committee, which convened on Friday in the presence of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam of Lebanon, agreed to begin implementing the directives outlined in the joint statement issued by the Lebanese-Palestinian summit held on Wednesday in Beirut, in terms of restricting weapons to the hands of the Lebanese state.

A source in Salam’s office told Arab News: “June 16 will mark the beginning of the Lebanese army’s deployment to Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, namely Shatila, Mar Elias and Burj Al-Barajneh camps, to take control of the Palestinian factions’ weapons.

“This will involve Lebanese army patrols inside these camps, followed by subsequent phases targeting camps in the Bekaa, northern Lebanon and south, particularly Ain Al-Hilweh, the largest, most densely populated and factionally diverse Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, encompassing factions affiliated or non-affiliated with the liberation organization.

The source said the “implementation date will be communicated to all Palestinian factions, including Hamas,” and that “the factions will convene to agree on the mechanism, and that pressure will be applied to any group that refuses to relinquish its weapons.”

Addressing Hamas’s earlier stance linking the surrender of its weapons to that of Hezbollah, the source said “there is no connection between the two issues. Once the disarmament process begins, neither Hamas nor any other faction will be able to obstruct or impede it.”

The source said that Arab and regional actors are actively supporting Lebanon in facilitating the disarmament process.

Salam welcomed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to “resolve the issue of Palestinian weapons in the camps,” noting the “positive impact of this decision in strengthening Lebanese-Palestinian relations and improving the humanitarian and socio-economic conditions of Palestinian refugees.”

He affirmed Lebanon’s “adherence to its national principles.”

Salam called for “the swift implementation of practical steps through a clear execution mechanism and a defined timeline.”

According to a statement, both sides agreed “to launch a process to hand over weapons based on a set timetable, accompanied by practical steps to enhance the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees, and to intensify joint meetings and coordination to put in place the necessary arrangements to immediately begin implementing these directives.”

A statement issued after talks between Abbas and Joseph Aoun, Lebanon’s president, reaffirmed “their commitment to the principle that weapons must be exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese state, to end any manifestations that contradict the logic of the Lebanese state, and the importance of respecting Lebanon’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.”

Since the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, and the suppression of their political rights — Lebanon has had 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

According to the Population and Housing Census in the Palestinian Camps and Gatherings in Lebanon, 72.8 percent of Palestinians in the camps face dire living conditions. The rest are Syrians, Lebanese, and other foreigners, the majority of whom are foreign workers.

Abbas, during his visit, reiterated that “the refugee camps are under the sovereignty of the Lebanese state and the Lebanese army, and the presence of weapons in the camps outside the state’s authority weakens Lebanon. Any weapon that is not under the command of the state is weakening Lebanon and endangering the Palestinian cause.”

Hisham Debsi, director of the Tatweer Center for Strategic Studies and Human Development and a Palestinian researcher, characterized the Lebanese-Palestinian joint statement as “a foundational document that functions as a political, ethical, and sovereign framework. Opposition to its declared positions would be tantamount to rejecting the Lebanese government’s oath of office and ministerial declaration.”

Debsi said: “The joint statement has blocked any potential maneuvering by Hamas to retain its weapons, since the declaration provides the Lebanese state with complete Palestinian legitimacy to remove protection from any armed Palestinian individual. Abu Mazen (Abbas) has reinforced this position repeatedly throughout his Beirut meetings.”

In his assessment, “no faction can now challenge both Lebanese and Palestinian authority given this unified stance.”

Debsi highlighted “a fundamental division within Hamas’s Lebanon branch, with one camp advocating transformation into a political party with the other supporting maintaining ties to Iranian-backed groups.”

He added: “Those opposing Hamas disarmament will face political and security consequences, particularly as camp residents seek to restructure their communities beyond armed resistance, which has become obsolete and must evolve into peaceful advocacy.”

Arab News

Arab News is Saudi Arabia's first English-language newspaper. It was founded in 1975 by Hisham and Mohammed Ali Hafiz. Today, it is one of 29 publications produced by Saudi Research & Publishing Company (SRPC), a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group (SRMG).