North Korea has criticized the United States for bolstering another nuclear alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, calling its submarine deal with Australia under the AUKUS security partnership a threat to regional peace.

The North’s state Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) issued the criticism Thursday in a commentary, saying the U.S. nuclear club will never work in the Asia-Pacific region.

The criticism comes as Australia just made its first payment of 500 million dollars to the U.S. to acquire U.S. nuclear-powered submarines under the trilateral AUKUS security partnership also involving Britain.

The KCNA said this was not just a financial transaction but the activation of another nuclear alliance led by the United States, denouncing the deal as a dangerous attempt to further worsen the political and military environment in the Asia-Pacific region.

The report also said a nuclear alliance called AUKUS, on top of Washington’s trilateral partnership with Seoul and Tokyo, would amount to a multilayered nuclear siege against the United States’ enemies in the region.

North Korea then warned the U.S. to contemplate the consequences of its military adventurism and of bringing a nuclear cloud to the Asia-Pacific region.