De-nuking Iran is more complicated

America’s most unpredictable president has just pulled a rabbit out of his diplomatic hat. In less than six months, Donald Trump switched from threatening North Korea with “fire and fury” to actually meeting Kim Jong-un and praising him. And while the two announced yet another beginning of North Korea’s “denuclearization process,” other countries with similar sticky nuclear issues, such as Iran, must have been watching and taking note, even though what may have worked with Pyongyang will not with Tehran.

For decades now, the world has drawn a connection between the two countries, perhaps because both North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons while also swearing to annihilate the West. But other than having anti-Western autocratic regimes that seek nukes, Pyongyang and Tehran have little else in common. As hard as it has been – and likely will continue to be – to defang a nuclear North Korea, it will be doubly so with Iran.

North Korea’s war with America is now a relic of the past. In addition, the Cold War is over, and communist countries – first and foremost Russia and China – have become fiercely capitalistic (in their individual fashion). On reflection, then, Pyongyang’s job seems relatively easy: give up nukes and join the club of Asian Tigers, called as such for enjoying fast-paced economic development over the past decades.

During the years when South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore were growing their economies, Pyongyang was busy guaranteeing the survival of the Kim dynasty through acquiring nuclear and missile technologies, and making these programs the centerpiece of North Korea’s national pride. But now Kim seems interested in the economy, even though it is probable that his rule will always be underwritten by raw and brute power.

For Kim, the challenge is to assure the Trump administration that his nukes will eventually be gone. For doing so, Kim expects America to minimize its threatening military posture, and to allow for the integration of North Korea into the world economy. To that end, Kim also said he would stop missile testing while Trump promised to stop “war exercises” and imagined North Korea as a prime real-estate location – between China and South Korea – where hotels and beach resorts could be built. Lastly, implicit in the offer of a security guarantee to North Korea is that the US would also not seek regime change in Pyongyang.

The problem is whether Kim will keep his promise. Or will the US president muddy the definition of denuclearization from “verifiable and irreversible” to letting Kim pretend that he has given up his nukes, while in fact

Kim hides them. Since his election in 2016,

Trump has proven masterful in walking back his earlier promises and repurposing them.

If a historic deal with North Korea means some redefinition and rebranding, Trump will happily do so. And from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, we learned the American presidents wield immense power in making such deals, though with little long-term guarantee.

Trump’s view of a North Korean deal is in fact very similar to how his predecessor Barack Obama imagined the nuclear deal with Iran, albeit with Obama offering even more concessions to the Iranians.

With North Korea, the trade is clear: Pyongyang denuclearizes, and in return the world reintegrates it into its diplomatic community of equals and the global economy. With Iran, however, a third element is at play: Tehran’s “destabilizing activities” in the Middle East and around the world. For unlike North Korea, famously known as the Hermit Kingdom and has thus ever only been focused on its own survival rather than being an exporter of its political ideology, Iran is actively engaged in spreading its influence and theocracy throughout the Middle East. (North Korea has no equivalent of Iran’s Hezbollah and Houthis, to name just two.) That is why Iran will cheat on any deal and make reasonable people uncomfortable about any accommodation for Tehran.

Like Trump, Obama wanted to start his negotiations big. During his campaign, Obama promised to send his secretaries of defense and state to Tehran to meet their counterparts. When the Iranians did not open their doors, Obama wrote to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeatedly, and chased Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the UN General Assembly in New York. Finally getting Rouhani to take his call, this was a conversation that Obama felt was so historic that he held one of his rare press conferences to hype it.

Obama wanted to flip Iran back to pre-1979. After all, it was Washington that started the Iranian nuclear program under Shah Reza Pahlavi. If Tehran goes back to being an ally, so goes the argument, then its nukes will come to be in safe hands. But unlike what Obama had hoped for, Iran never became a friend. It took America’s concessions in Iraq, pocketed a deal with a temporary ban on uranium-enrichment and used its newfound wealth to fund and arm militias across the Middle East. Iran shook hands with America with its right hand, while funding, arming and advising its anti-American militias with its left hand. Iran also exploited the end of sanctions to lure Europeans – through contracts with their giant companies – away from America. Hence, Obama’s deal with Iran in effect hurt America, and was thus doomed.

With Trump and Kim having signed a deal, the world wonders: How could North Korea succeed where Iran failed? The answer to the nuclear question isn’t nuclear at all. - Hussain Abdul-Hussain is the Washington bureau chief of Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai and a former visiting fellow at Chatham House in London. - Syndication Bureau

Iran shook hands with America with its right hand, while funding, arming and advising its anti-American militias with its left hand