Is the recent agreement between North Korea and the United States, whereby the latter took the former off its list of countries that support terrorism in exchange for the former reopening access to its nuclear facilities, a model for a future settlement of the nuclear standoff between Iran and those countries who don’t want it to develop nuclear weapons? The answer is no, because the two countries are very different from each other and they have very different aims in their negotiations with the outside world.

1.

North Korean under Kim Jong Il is a hellish successor regime to the Chosun dynasty; an absolute monarchy grotesquely fused with the most appalling aspects of Stalinism. There’s no privacy or freedom of any sort for anyone, everything is controlled and the only thoughts that it’s permitted to have are ones favorable to the regime and its leader.

2.

The basic aim of North Korean foreign policy appears to be the obtaining of enough aid to keep all of its people from starving to death, combined with present regime being allowed to survive and do as it pleases at home. Its approach to negotiations with foreigners has long been based on threats and the occasional foul deed, followed by an outbreak of reasonableness when the prospect of having its apparent ire placated by foreign aid appears on the horizon.

3.

Despite its deeply repugnant nature, the North Korean regime is not infected by hatred of a people whose state is far from its borders and with whom it doesn’t have even the faintest hint of a legitimate national interest clash. In other words, Kim Jong Il, whatever his limitations, isn’t prone to condemning the existence of, say, “the Khmer entity” and there hasn’t been any conference held in Pyongyang where “experts” gathered to deny the genocide committed against the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

4.

North Korea’s attitude to South Korea alternates between condemning its governments as lackeys of the United States and threatening to reunify the country by force, on the one hand, and declarations of eternal brotherhood and requests for aid and investment, on the other.

5.

There is considerable animosity to Japan in both North and South Korea. This arises from the scorching memory of being colonized by their neighbor from 1890 to 1945. However, neither country seeks to end the sovereignty of Japan as a state for people who identify themselves as Japanese and hand it back to the Ainu.

6.

The fear and paranoia expressed by the North Korean government towards the United States is not entirely without rational explanation. The United States Air Force laid waste to their country within living memory. Nevertheless, the North Korean regime does not propose that the United States of America be dissolved and the running of its territory be handed over to a confederation of native American tribes.

7.

North Korea is poor in natural resources. It exports military technology and arms to earn hard currency. Iran, by contrast, is very rich in natural resources.

8.

The people of Iran enjoy much greater liberty than those of North Korean. They can vote in elections of a sort and there is a considerable civil society which struggles against government control.

9.

In spite of this, the country is governed by a claque of resentful clerics who seek to restore Iran to what they see as its rightful place in the world; a place that they believe has been denied to it by the machinations first of Great Britain and later of the United States. A good part of this ruling  elite seems to be motivated by the belief that Jews rule the world and that the state in which a great number of Jews seek to exercise their right to self determination is uniquely illegitimate and deserves to be destroyed. If they don’t believe these things then it’s very hard to explain many of their public utterances.

10.

Iran has a client militia, Hezbollah, in another sovereign state hundreds of kilometers from its borders. This militia challenges the authority of the state where it operates and serves as Iran’s pit bull in the struggle to the destroy Israel. Iran also aids another armed organization, Hamas. Hamas is motivated by a toe-curlingly racist and exterminationist ideology. It is, as far as one can judge, doing all that it can to prevent the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

11.

By comparison with the experience of North Korean, the degree of interference in its internal affairs suffered by Iran at the hands by imperial powers has been relatively slight. No recent and immensely bloody civil war, with the dominant powers of the day backing different horses, no carpet bombing campaign and, until recently, no large imperial garrison crouched on its borders and even the one that’s there now has things on its mind other than Iran. In spite of this, the level of resentment felt by the regime towards the United States at least matches and possibly exceeds that felt in Pyongyang.

12.

North Korea has already detonated some sort of nuclear device. Iran still hasn’t.

13.

In view of all the foregoing, there’s no reason to think that what might or might not work for a sickly monarcho-stalinist regime that only wants to be allowed to go on torturing its wretched citizens in peace will necessarily serve as model for dealing with a oil-rich theocracy infected by an irrational hatred for a miniscule minority of the world’s population and their tiny state.