North Korea’s foreign ministry has denounced the U.S. Golden Dome missile shield project as a very dangerous and threatening initiative.

According to the North’s state Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, the ministry’s Institute for American Studies issued the criticism in a memorandum the previous day, saying the aim of the U.S. plan is to threaten the strategic security of the nuclear weapons states.

The institute said that contrary to the U.S. claim that the Golden Dome is for defense, it could easily be converted into an offensive system capable of launching missiles at any time.

North Korea called the plan typical of the “America first” mindset, saying it represents an “outer space nuclear war scenario” supporting the U.S. strategy to achieve unipolar domination with the preemptive establishment of a military substructure in space.

It added that the U.S. plan to build a new missile defense system is the root cause of the global nuclear and space arms race, accusing the U.S. of raising security concerns among nuclear weapons states and turning outer space into a potential nuclear battlefield. 

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced details and initial funding for the missile shield system, vowing to put it in place before the end of his term.