North Korea respects Iran’s choice of a new supreme leader, state media said Wednesday, accusing the US and Israel of undermining regional peace.
Pyongyang, a longstanding US adversary, has previously condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran as an “illegal act of aggression”.
Defying US President Donald Trump’s desire to have a say in who runs Iran, the Islamic republic on Sunday named Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father, longtime ruler Ali Khamenei, who died in an Israeli airstrike on February 28.
“We respect the rights and choice of the Iranian people to elect their supreme leader,” Pyongyang’s unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The official said the United States and Israel are “destroying the regional peace and security foundations and escalating instability worldwide”.
The spokesperson accused Washington and Israel of violating Iran’s “political system and territorial integrity”, and attempting to “overthrow its social system”.
Such actions “deserve worldwide criticism and rejection as they can never be tolerated,” the official added.
The United States has for decades led efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme, but summits, sanctions and diplomatic pressure have had little impact.
In recent months, the Trump administration has mounted a push to revive high-level talks with Pyongyang, eyeing a potential summit between the US president and the North’s Kim Jong Un this year.
Trump said during his Asia trip in October that he was “100 percent” open to meeting with Kim, a remark that went unanswered by the North.
After largely ignoring those overtures for months, Kim recently said that the two nations could “get along” if Washington accepted Pyongyang’s nuclear status.
