President Barack Obama
President Barack ObamaReuters

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday condemned North Korea’s latest nuclear test, calling it a “grave threat” to regional security and international stability and vowing to take “additional significant steps,” including sanctions, against Pyongyang.

The test was carried out early Friday morning, and South Korean officials said it was North Korea’s “largest ever” nuclear test.

The test showed that North Korea has no interest “in being a responsible member of the international community,” Obama said in a statement Friday.

The president reiterated that the U.S. “does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state.”

“Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Korea's provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, Israel condemned the nuclear test as well, with the Foreign Ministry saying it “contradicts international norms and Security Council resolutions.”

“The nuclear test, and the ballistic missile tests that preceded it, necessitate concrete action by the international community against the proliferation to the Middle East carried out by North Korea in a variety of spheres,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The test is the latest in a series of provocations by North Korea, which continues to defy UN resolutions.

Late last month, North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which its leader, Kim Jong Un, later boasted was "the greatest success" that put the country in the "front rank" of nuclear military powers.

In July, the North test fired three ballistic missiles. In fact, tensions in the region have soared since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, claiming it was a hydrogen bomb.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)