(TruNews) North Korea’s message shortly after launching its Hwasong-15 ICBM into the Sea of Japan was simple: The game is over; we won.

And while President Donald Trump may be suggesting the matter will be handled, nuclear non-proliferation experts are siding with Kim Jong-un on this one. As Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told The Atlantic magazine:

We’re now at a point where they have tested an ICBM that can clearly hit the U.S.… They’ve tested a nuclear weapon that had a couple hundred kilotons’ yield, which they say is a miniaturized thermonuclear weapon, which kind of looks like a miniaturized thermonuclear weapon to me.

It’s done. It’s over.

The whole point of a preventive war is to do it before they get the nuclear weapons. If you do it after, it’s just a plain old nuclear war.

Lewis noted the Hwasong-15 was not launched from a 16-wheeled mobile launch platform imported from China under the guise of “logging equipment,” but rather on a domestically produced 18-wheel launcher. This further illustrates the failure of previous sanction regimes, and the folly of attempting further sector-oriented sanctions.

He also doubts this is the end of the line for the North Korean nuclear weapons program. Further testing of the Hwasong-15 is highly likely as it continues to tweak its solid-fuel engines, and an open-air detonation is possible if Kim believes he needs to prove the lethality of his warheads.

Another expert, Suzanne DiMaggio of New America, has had direct talks with the North Koreas, unofficially, about their nuclear ambitions. She told The Atlantic:

In my conversation with the North Koreans, they’ve been very clear that their key goal is to demonstrate they’re capable of striking the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile. They have told us that their goal is not to amass a giant nuclear arsenal, but to have just enough to safeguard the regime, and then they will turn their attention to economic development of the country. Of course, this is what they told us. We should fully test that.

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