North Korea Chairman Kim Jong Un likely has no intention of giving up his nuclear arsenal, despite the calls from President Donald Trump for denuclearization, and coming up with an agreement will prove much more difficult than the one that was reached with Iran, former CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday.
"It's been developing a nuclear weapons capability, a ballistic missile capability, for many years because it wants to have a deterrent against what it perceives a potential US effort to try to unify the peninsula under South Korea, so he does see this as an existential threat," Brennan told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I do not believe he has any intention at this point of giving up his nuclear arsenal."
To win, the U.S. will need to play a "game of three-dimensional chess" with Kim and to outmaneuver him.
"We need to be able to get him to make some concessions, whether it's providing us some inventory or if his nuclear weapons program...providing some access to international spectators," said Brennan. "As difficult as the Iranian nuclear agreement was to forge, this is going to be so much more difficult because Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons capability. North Korea does."
An important first step will be to allow international inspectors into North Korea to visit facilities, even if that doesn't mean Kim will agree to denuclearize, said Brennan.
"It does mean he's going to take some steps, maybe in return for something, food assistance or maybe something else but there needs to be some agreement of demonstrated movement in the direction we want North Korea to go," said Brennan.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.