Unlikely. If they had managed to build a bomb and test it, it would have shown up easily on the world’s seismographs. Meanwhile, we knew for sure that North Korea was building, testing, and weaponizing bombs. And eventually working on long range delivery with the capability of reaching the US shores. And we did nothing.
Here’s what we knew about North Korea
1956: started training their scientists to begin a nuclear program
1959: signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia
1970-1985: worked on reactors, mining, and enriching
1990-1994: they refuse to cooperate with the US, blocking inspections
1995: around this time they sign some accords but the international community is not happy with inspection timelines
2002: expels inspectors
2003-2006: lots of back and forth regarding testing and inspections and limitations
Oct 2006: they announce they have tested their first weapon, but international scientists do not see seismographic indications that a weapon of nuclear strength was successfully tested
2007: lots more international back and forth around inspections and testing a second device
April 2009: North Korea expels nuclear inspectors
May 2009: they test a second nuclear device
May 2015: North Korea claims to have a device capable of reaching the US
2016: they test a hydrogen bomb
2017: testing long range missiles
2018: inspections resume
December 2019: Kim announces “the world will witness a new strategic weapon to be possessed by the DPRK in the near future.”
March 2026: adopted a new amendment mandating automatic nuclear strikes as reprisals
There was a huge amount of monitoring and negotiation over the years and there’s a lot more detail (even day by day level stuff) about what we knew and when we knew it. Info from Wikipedia: Timeline of the North Korean nuclear program – Wikipedia
And never during the course of things did we attack them.
Iran’s nuclear program
We had a similar level of knowledge about Iran’s program and there were of course various accords to limit that program but we know for a fact they had never tested a weapon and they were still in the early enriching phase. Although it took North Korea around 30 years to go from enriching to weaponization and delivery, Trump decided we needed to attack Iran.
In June of 2025 Trump attacked a number of facilities and announced that their enrichment program had been “totally obliterated.”
In February we began what we now call the war with Iran. In spite of a lot of bad faith in negotiations there is absolutely no tangible evidence they were further along with their program than simply enriching uranium. The stated objectives of the war are unclear but something about preventing them from getting a bomb seems to come up a lot. Even though Trump claimed to have obliterated their nuclear program.
But sure, let’s go blow up schools and civilian infrastructure and mess up oil delivery to the entire planet. Using Trump’s love for all caps: STUPID!
P.S. Don’t forget Trump saying how he’d respect Iran if they had a nuclear weapon. Yes, he really said that.