Policy debates over Iran have consistently – over the course of many years – been bound up with events in North Korea. The nuclear programs of both countries are deeply intertwined, with Iran helping to fund Pyongyang’s weapons development and the North Koreans providing a return on Iran’s investment in the form of new technology.

Meanwhile U.S. policy makers and media outlets have echoed the concerns of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the similarities between Iran’s diplomatic strategy and Pyongyang’s history of successfully using talks to sneak across the nuclear finish line.

The destabilizing effects of North Korean nuclearization, then, have been pointed to as harbingers of what may happen in the Middle East should Iran complete what is widely believed to be its drive toward nuclear weapons. Diplomacy with North Korea has remained stalled, and this week U.S. experts again met with North Korean officials to discuss resuming stalled talks regarding Pyongyang’s atomic program.

Pyongyang put the region on edge earlier this year by detonating nuclear weapons, cutting off its contacts with the West, and moving to war footing. It has consistently used nuclear blackmail to seek to extract concessions from the West.

The cascade effects of North Korean nuclear weapons have been dampened, however, because countries targeted by North Korea – specifically, South Korea and Japan – are under the U.S.’s nuclear umbrella, and so avail themselves of the deterance provided by the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal. Even so Washington and Seoul this week signed an agreement this week to additionally enhance South Korea’s deterrent.

In any case America’s Arab allies do not enjoy the same protection, and President Barack Obama has acknowledged that Iranian nuclearization would result in a Middle East arms race that would shred the global nonproliferation regime.

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