Iran dealIran deal supporters: Comparisons with 1994 North Korea deal not applicable
Critics of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 powers charge that the negotiations, and the impending deal, repeat the mistakes the United States made in the nuclear deal it signed with North Korea in 1994. Supporters of the administration say there is no comparison between what happened twenty years ago and now. One example: the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea was a 4-page general document which did not include and reference to enforcement mechanisms should North Korea decide not to comply with the agreement. The emerging agreement with Iran, on the other hand, is a 150-page document dominated by intricate technical specifications and detailed procedures for inspection and verification, followed by specific benchmarks and definitions of violations and non-compliance and the resulting penalties which would be imposed on Iran should such violations occur.
As Iran and six world powers, led by the United States, work to meet a 30 June deadline for an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, some analysts are comparing the negotiations and the eventual outcome to the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework.
North Korea was the Iran nuclear crisis of its day, notes the Christian Science Monitor. Over twenty years ago, North Korean technicians extracted 8,000 spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon nuclear reactor — enough for five atomic bombs if processed into weapons-grade plutonium. Quickly, the Pentagon devised a strike plan which would destroy the reactor and entomb the plutonium, while hoping to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. The strike plan was never carried out after a diplomatic agreements was reached by the two countries.
The failure fully to implement the agreements allowed North Korea secretly to build a nuclear bomb and test it in 2006.
Critics of the pending Iran deal have called the negotiations a repeat of the mistakes made with North Korea. Supporters of the talks disagree. “First it was the Soviet Union, they were the original ‘rogue state,’ and everyone was saying you can’t do a deal with those guys,” says Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who was coordinator for the Agreed Framework from 1995 to 2000. “We did deals, and Reagan did a deal, and some of the people criticizing this deal criticized Reagan for dealing with Gorbachev, and on and on,” says Wit. “The fact is you can do deals with rogue states … if the deal is in the rogue state’s interests.… But of course you need insurance, and that is where the verification comes in.”
The 4-page Agreed Framework required North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program and allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections in exchange for two electricity-generating light-water nuclear reactors, “heavy oil” to provide energy until those reactors came online, the lifting of U.S. sanctions, and political benefits. The agreement did not include enforcement mechanisms should North Korea decide not to comply with the agreement.
The Iran deal, by contrast, could run to more than 150 pages and will be far more detailed with stricter verification measures and technical steps to curb Iran’s nuclear work, along with step-by-step sanctions relief Iran gets in return.
