About Iran, I can think of nothing useful to say. There are good signs: Iran seems to be trending towards democracy, having tested the idea of Islamic revolutionary government pretty much to destruction. There are bad signs: The Iranians are far along in the development of nuclear weapons. It seems to me that these are probably two independent variables. I mean, getting nukes will do little to extend the life of the current dictatorship; and conversely, a switch to democratic and constitutional government may do nothing to reduce the belief among her people that Iran needs nuclear weapons. Iran, after all, shares a 500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that (a) mainly* practices a different form of Islam, (b) is seriously unstable, and (c) has a good stock of nukes. If I were Iranian, I would want democracy and nukes. Dealing with Iran is going to be the diplomatic equivalent of brain surgery, but there is a decent chance that everything will go right in that country.

North Korea is a very different case. For one thing, the people of the "Hermit Kingdom" are cut off from the rest of the world in a way that Iranians are not, and cannot be. I'm sure you have seen those satellite pictures of the world at night, with South Korea, and even northeast China, ablaze with lights, while North Korea is dark. Darkness — the darkness of utter ignorance about the world beyond their borders — is indeed what North Koreans dwell in. Their state TV and radio tell them nothing. They have no internet and are not permitted to make international phone calls. There are people in Iran reading NRO. I know there are, I've had e-mails from them. On one occasion, in fact, when I seemed to have lumped Iranians in with Arabs in an opinion column, I got 20 or 30 angry e-mails from Iran, objecting in the strongest terms to the implication that they resembled Arabs in any way. I have never had an e-mail from North Korea, and do not expect to get one any time soon.

For another thing, though the present rulers of Iran have a lot to answer for, they cannot compare in depravity, either singly or jointly, with Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator. To take two items from the charge sheet at random:

In October 1983, President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea was on a state visit to Burma with several of his cabinet colleagues. They were supposed to attend a ceremony at the martyr's memorial in Rangoon, to commemorate one of the founding fathers of modern Burma. His colleagues duly assembled at the memorial, but President Chun was delayed in traffic. While they were waiting for him, a bomb went off, killing 21 and wounding 46. Four of the dead were members of Chun's cabinet, including his deputy prime minister and his foreign minister (who rejoiced in the unforgettable name Lee Bum Suk**). Investigation revealed that the bombing was the work of a North Korean special-ops team, reporting to Kim Jong Il, who was at that time heir apparent to his father, Kim Il Sung. (Kim Senior died in 1994.)

In November 1987 a South Korean civil airliner, KAL flight 858, exploded over the Bay of Bengal, killing all 115 people aboard. One of the North Korean agents responsible, a young woman named Kim Hyun Hee, survived the inevitable suicide attempt — North Korean agents are trained to kill themselves to avoid capture — and revealed that she was part of a special-ops unit run by Kim Jong Il.***