On the morning of April 2, 2013, we woke up to two news items about the development of nuclear weapons by totalitarian states. The first item (in The Wall Street Journal) announced that the Iranians are putting their nuclear activities on hold so as not to exacerbate the crisis with the West before the national elections in June. The second (from the various news agencies) stated that the North Koreans are restarting their nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment sites, for the sake of peace, of course. Is there any connection between these two events? I’m not sure there isn’t.

Just a reminder: The first and so far the only time that Iran took any serious steps back from its nuclear program for military purposes occurred in 2003, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The presence of American military might within mortar range of its borders convinced Iran not only to postpone, not only to slow down, but to go so far as to suspend the activities of its “weapons group” entirely. This was considered enough progress for the annual American National Intelligence Survey published a year later to put a damper on Israeli warnings by releasing tepid report claiming that the Iranians were generations away from having nuclear capabilities. This gave the ayatollahs’ regime the vital time-out it needed to restore past glory and come within arm’s length of military grade nuclear capabilities.

Now, as another nuclear front heats up, this one between North Korea and the United States, Tehran is facing a dilemma. Unlike Iran, North Korea is  isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, and it has been since the get-go. It's impossible to impose sanctions on it. It doesn’t care about what the West thinks. It just sticks its tongue out at the United States, even if it sometimes gives the impression that this isn’t a nation at all, but rather, a comic interlude.

Nevertheless, it's important to remember that this comic interlude is armed from head to toe and has nuclear capabilities. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may look like a parody of some insane despot from Saturday Night Live, but the fact that he has his hand on the button in Pyongyang means that this isn’t funny anymore. North Korea manages to do whatever it wants, including the development of an ambitious nuclear program, including a declaration of war against its neighbor to the south. The fact that it avoids being punished for all that does not bode well for the American policy or for the international efforts to bring an end to the Iranian nuclear program by peaceful means.