North Korea’s successful launch of a long-range rocket is sparking fresh speculation over the communist state’s covert partnership with Iran, another rogue nuclear aspirant.

A string of news reports and leaked diplomatic cables have constantly suggested that the two pariah states cooperate on developing atomic weapons and ballistic missiles through personnel exchanges and technology sharing.

Despite Tehran’s denial, U.S. Congress is pushing to highlight the decades-long ties in its upcoming resolution designed to censure the North for the Dec. 12 liftoff. The motion cites news reports to mention that Iranian scientists apparently specialized in missile development were dispatched to offer technical support to the North and were observing the launch at the site.

The resolution was proposed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, its Republican chair, and 10 co-sponsors from both camps including Rep. Ed Royce, who will succeed her next month.

Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday that Hamid Reza Taraghi, vice general secretary of Iran’s Islamic Coalition Party, has said his delegation was informed of an upcoming rocket launch during talks on Oct. 20 in Pyongyang with Kim Yong-il, director of international affairs at the Workers’ Party.

Shortly after the North’s rocket launch, Gen. Masoud Jazaeri, a top Iranian military official, sent a congratulatory message to the Kim Jong-un regime, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

“Experience has shown that independent countries, by self-confidence and perseverance, can quickly reach the height of self-sufficiency in science and technology. Hegemonic powers, such as the United States, are unable to stop the progress of such countries,” he was quoted by saying.

Iran is believed to have first successfully test-fired its rocket in 2002. It claimed in 2004 it has secured the ability to mass produce its Shahab-3 long-range ballistic missile, whose prototype model is speculated to be the North’s Nodong-1.

Such collaboration is “certainly” possible, said James Schoff, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Asia-Pacific security advisor to U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

“They clearly have some common interests in trying to build up a deterrent so that they can keep outsiders from interfering in their business, which allows them to carry on policies that are unpopular with neighbors such as funding and supplying terrorist organizations on the part of Iran, and for North Korea seeking to undermine South Korea while oppressing its own people,” he said.

Stephanie Lieggi, a senior East Asia researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of Middlebury College in Vermont, suspects cooperation between the two countries but said it is unclear “who is helping whom.”

“North Korea has sold systems like the Nodong to Iran in the past but Iran has improved on the systems and may now be able to assist the DPRK in aspects of their program,” she said via email, referring to the North’s official name.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi rejected the accusations, saying the two countries’ nuclear programs are “different in essence.”

“Of course, North Korea as a member state of the international community has friendly relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this relationship is not against the interests of any third country,” he said in a recent interview with The Korea Herald.

Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast also said on Dec. 11 that “what has been said about missile and nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea is completely baseless.”

The clandestine partnership dates back to Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, Mehmanparast acknowledged, but said it became confined to humanitarian and political affairs ever since.

In stark contrast, experts say the ties have rather deepened after former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 branded the two countries as part of an “axis of evil.“

Then they appear to have stipulated their dealings in September in an agreement to cooperate in science and technology. It largely focuses on research, student exchanges and joint laboratories, covering areas from information technology and engineering to energy and agriculture.

The pact was sealed on the sidelines of the Nonaligned Movement conference in Tehran between Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Kim Yong-nam, the North’s nominal leader and president of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

During a meeting with Kim, Khamenei said the two countries are “besieged by common enemies.”

Led by the U.S., the U.N. Security Council has imposed crippling sanctions on both countries to contain their nuclear ambitions.

“Iran and North Korea continue to reinforce their mutual resistance to the Bush doctrine of the axis of evil,” said Douglas Paal, vice president for studies of the Washington-based CEIP and a national security advisor to former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

“For them, the solution to pressure from the U.S. is to be more like India and Pakistan and less like Libya, in the sense of having undeniable capabilities, not in becoming democratic. So the race is well on to develop capabilities in weapons of mass destruction.”

Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist and professor at Middlebury College, agreed that the North and Iran will continue their nuclear projects.

“I think a few Iranian leaders may now sense that once a country obtains nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability that the U.N. Security Council and the West generally treats it with more respect, but these Iranian politicians may well have been aware of this dynamic before,” he said.

“The North Koreans, witnessing what is happening to Iran, are probably quite pleased that they demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability, however crude it may have been.”

The 15-member council quickly condemned last week Pyongyang’s breach of its bans on nuclear and missile activity and is now discussing a fresh round of sanctions.

Despite veto-wielding China’s resistance, calls are growing for tougher action including measures as strict as those imposed upon Iran.

Tehran has seen its crude exports ― the mainstay of its economy ― plummet in the wake of U.N., U.S. and European bans such as on bank transactions and tanker insurances.

A primary U.S. concern is potential exports of North Korean technology to other “rogue” groups. The regime “could sell this technology to others, including Iran and Pakistan, who have been regular customers of North Korea’s other missiles,” warned Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Washington and its allies should submit a new U.N. Security Council resolution requiring more extensive sanctions on North Korea for yet another U.N. violation,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer.

He called for sanctioning North Korean banks, businesses and government entities, as well as punishing foreign financial institutions facilitating Pyongyang’s illegal activities such as currency counterfeiting, drug smuggling and money laundering.

While acknowledging the need for a stronger response, Schoff underscored the difference in economic systems and regional dynamics surrounding the two countries.

“That doesn’t mean the sanctions have to be the same as with Iran, but there should be some additional penalty or at least tougher enforcement of current sanctions,” he added.

The council imposed sanctions against the North after its failed launches in 2006 and 2009.

But China, the North’s ally and biggest patron, is yet again resisting a U.S.-led drive to add new, harsher sanctions to the council’s blacklist. After the regime’s April liftoff, Washington proposed to include about 40 new entities but Beijing opposed to all but three.

The council may instead step up efforts to enforce the current sanctions, for instance by tightening inspections of cargo shipped to and from the reclusive country to ensure no arms trade is taking place, said Kim Sook, Seoul’s chief U.N. representative.

To more effectively stifle Pyongyang’s atomic ambitions, Butt of Middlebury College said sanctions should be replaced with tighter monitoring of their programs.

“They are not working in changing Iran’s behavior and they are unlikely to work (for North Korea),” he said.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)