Commentary
In the heated debates over the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, some pundits try to make the case that even if Iran does get the bomb, “because we’ve learned to coexist with North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, we could do the same with Iran.” After all, both are rogue regimes, spewing bellicose rhetoric and defying international norms by pursuing weapons of mass destruction amid sanctions and isolation. But by digging just a little, we see this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. North Korea, under Kim Jong Un, is a survivalist dictatorship focused on self-preservation, with no grand ideology to export, unless you count “life is miserable, then you cease to exist” as being a viable export. In sharp contrast, the Khomeinist regime is controlled by those promoting a transcendental “martyrdom culture” that incentivizes risk by promising eternal rewards. This makes Iran’s expansionist Islamic supremacism far more contagious and harder to deter than North Korea’s secular dreariness and abject poverty.
