North Korean leader Kim Jong Un invoked the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran to justify retaining his country’s nuclear arsenal Monday, as Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament passed a revised constitution whose specific changes were not publicly disclosed.
Speaking to the Supreme People’s Assembly during a two-day session that concluded Monday, Kim said the current situation “clearly proves” North Korea was right to reject U.S. pressure and what he described as Washington’s “sweet talk” to abandon its weapons. Kim did not name Iran by name.
“The government of our republic will continue to consolidate our absolutely irreversible status as a nuclear power and will aggressively wage a struggle against hostile forces to crush their provocations and schemes,” Kim told the assembly, Korean Central News Agency reported.
The constitutional revision drew less attention than Kim’s speech, but carries structural weight. Analysts had widely expected the changes to formally encode South Korea as a permanent enemy state and remove references to shared nationhood, which is a legal codification of Kim’s 2024 declaration that peaceful unification with the South was no longer a North Korean goal. State media confirmed the revisions passed but offered no details on the final text.
Kim called South Korea the “most hostile” state and accused the United States of global “state terrorism and aggression.” He said whether adversaries “choose confrontation or peaceful coexistence is up to them, and we are prepared to respond to any choice.”
🚨🇰🇵🇺🇸 Kim Jong Un is calling U.S. actions against Iran “state-sponsored terrorism and aggression.”
He also told his parliament it proves he was right to keep nuclear weapons.
The leader of the most repressed society on earth is calling out Trump’s behavior. A bit rich coming… https://t.co/Ole3RA0RXo pic.twitter.com/BBfJUB5wdl
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 25, 2026
The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community states that “North Korea remains committed to expanding its strategic weapons programs, including missiles and nuclear warheads, and to solidifying its deterrent capability.”
North Korea is widely believed to have assembled dozens of nuclear warheads. At last month’s Workers’ Party Congress, Kim pledged to grow both the number of weapons and the delivery systems that carry them.
Trump has signaled openness to restarting negotiations with Pyongyang, reviving a diplomatic track that collapsed at the 2019 Hanoi summit. Kim has indicated he is willing to engage, but only if Washington abandons demands for denuclearization and accepts North Korea as a nuclear state.
