IRAN and North Korea may be two points on President George W. Bush’s old “axis of evil,” but the authoritarian governments are polar opposites when it comes to defusing their nuclear programs.
North Korea revealed secrets about its arsenal of bomb fuel and destroyed part of its atomic factory on television this past week in exchange for economic and political concessions from the United States. It was an encouraging sign the secretive Communist country may give up its bombs altogether and an incremental victory for the kind of old-fashioned, talk-to-your-enemies diplomacy distrusted by Bush administration hard-liners. But it’s not a sign Iran also can be bought off, regardless of whether Bush or his successor talks to Tehran.
Weak, poor and inward-looking, North Korea needs and wants the help the world is offering. Although it remains, along with Iran, one of the most heavily penalized countries, North Korea now has won at least the possibility of greater inclusion in the global financial system, and at relatively little cost. In the end, nuclear know-how may be more valuable to North Korea as a commodity than it is in weapon-making.
Iran, however, is not such a willing customer. Strong, rich on $140-a-barrel oil and widely engaged in the world, Tehran has stiffed European courtiers and a late, heavily conditioned offer of US diplomacy. It has greeted an offer of economic incentives by speeding up its nuclear development work. North Korea craved direct US attention and got it, albeit only alongside a creaky multination negotiation. The leeway given to the State Department to cut a deal was a departure for Bush, who is unlikely to pursue the same strategy with Iran.
“I think that President Bush correctly, as we’ve seen on North Korea, as we’re seeing on Iran, recognizes that there are issues you simply can’t let drift,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has visited nuclear facilities in both countries. Both North Korea and Iran learned an important lesson from other nuclear powers: That the bomb is a ticket to international relevance.
