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 US. 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. For both nations, pursuit of a homegrown nuclear program brought tough economic penalties and diplomatic isolation, but also offers from the West and a newfound respect closer to home. North Korea did not do much to disguise its program, boasted it had the bomb and then proved it two years ago with a crude underground test. The offers improved the closer North Korea got to putting a working bomb on a long-range missile. Iran's nuclear program is a valuable nationalistic prop for the unpopular clerical rule. The government of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists it will not give up a uranium enrichment program that other nations are trusted to possess. Even Iranians who dislike their government chafe at the notion that the West, and particularly the nuclear superpower US, should dictate who gets the keys to the nuclear clubhouse. It also is a program with an ambiguity Iran finds useful and may not be willing to surrender. Iran claims it is a peaceful drive to develop nuclear energy. The US is skeptical, despite last year's intelligence assessment that Iran does not have an active weapons program now. So long as the program appears legitimate to Iranians and their supporters, Tehran can continue to refine its ability to make enriched uranium. The material can be used as fuel for either a power plant or a weapon. At some point, analysts fear, Iran will have a fait accompli. Just like North Korea, Iran's stock would go up if it actually had the bomb. Iran's less-developed program - it has never come close to the kind of test North Korea mounted - would appear to buy time for the US and others that have pledged not to let the clerical government possess nuclear weapons. North Korea agreed in principle three years ago to end its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political concessions. Not much has gone according to plan since, but the handover of a long-delayed nuclear dossier this past week is a sign that the basic bargain is working. “Tough multilateral diplomacy can yield promising results, yet the diplomatic process is not an end in itself,” Bush said Thursday. He quickly followed up with the promised US payoff: ending some trade penalties and giving notice that he plans to remove North Korea from the US list of nations that sponsor terrorism. The deal came with major strings. Bush and many who work for him do not trust North Korea, which has cheated before. Further concessions are tied to what Bush promised will be intensive double-checking. “They have agreed that every question that we have about their nuclear program - plutonium, uranium, proliferation - is something they have to answer,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. “That would mean, if there is any place we want to visit, we should be allowed to visit, any person we want to talk to, we should be allowed to.” It's hard to imagine Iran agreeing to that. – AP __
