Are North Koreans aiming for moon — or U.S. mainland?

Country says it has rocket that can send payloads into space.

WASHINGTON — Kim Jong Un is headed to the moon.

That, at least, is one of the official North Korean explanations for the testing last week of a rocket engine that, if as powerful as the North claims, would rival the commercial rockets that Jeffff Bezos and Elon Musk, of Amazon and Tesla, now use in their aerospace companies to fifire payloads into space.

Inside the U.S. intelligence agencies, though, there is considerable skepticism that North Korea is truly eager to plant a flflag on the lunar landscape. The agencies are exploring another explanation: that Kim, the North Kore a n l e a de r, i s r a c i ng ahead, as the United States is distracted by a bruising presidential election, to develop a way for his growing arsenal of nuclear weapons to reach New York and Washington.

The Nor th may not be working alone. An intelligence fifinding that the United States quietly made public in January suggests that the development of the North’s big engine, which it claims produces 80 tons of thrust, may be part of a joint partnership with Iran. A Treasury Department announcement of sanctions against Iranian offifficials and engineers named two who had “traveled to North Korea to work on an 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Korean government.”

Few threats as urgent as the dramatic escalation of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are likely to confront Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, who had their first debate Monday night, as president.

An engine that delivers 80 tons of thrust would have about three times the power of an advanced North Korean rocket shown in a ground test in April, though it is not possible to verify the North’s claims. By most unclassifified estimates, it will take North Korea perhaps fifive years to marry its missile advances with a weapon small enough and strong enough to survive the stresses of re-entering the atmosphere atop a ballistic missile.

So far, Kim’s engineers have never executed a military test flight that could reach beyond the middle of the Pacifific, though in a statement Friday, the North threatened to attack Guam, home of the U.S. B-1 bombers that conducted simulated runs last week over the Korean Peninsula.

The potential links to Iran complicate the issue. Iran has ignored a U.N. Security Council resolution to refrain from tests of nuclear-capable missiles for eight years.

The Obama administration has not sought sanctions, knowing they would be vetoed by Russia and China, nor has it said much in public about the details of the cooperation on the new rocket engine. There is a long history of sharing missile technology, but no persuasive evidence exists that the Iranians have been involved.

The moonshot talk may be aspirational, but it is not lunacy. Rocket experts say four of the new North Korean engines, clustered at the base of a space vehicle, would be powerful enough to hurl a no-frills payload to the moon.