“Certainly, North Korea doesn’t rue the day it acquired nuclear weapons,” said Christopher R. Hill, who led lengthy, ultimately unsuccessful, talks with Pyongyang in 2007 and 2008 to try to persuade it to dismantle its nuclear program.

Bombed by the US in a dramatic escalation, this mountainside enrichment plant south of Tehran is vital to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and central to Israel’s efforts to dismantle them.

There is a chance that much of Iran's highly enriched uranium survived Israeli and U.S. attacks because it may have been moved by Tehran soon after the first strikes, U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.