New Delhi, March 11 -- North Korea has thrown its weight behind Iran's new supreme leadership and delivered its sharpest condemnation yet of the US-Israeli war on Tehran, even as Kim Jong Un personally oversaw the test-firing of strategic cruise missiles from Pyongyang's most powerful warship - signalling that the West Asia conflict is now drawing in nuclear-armed states far beyond the Middle East.

State-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday quoted a spokesperson from North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs explicitly endorsing Tehran's new leadership following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli strike on 28 February - the opening salvo of the war now in its 12th day.

The Iranian Assembly of Experts has...