It's almost as if Iran and North Korea are part of some axis of evil, or something:
North Korea’s sudden advancement in developing nuclear weapons may be due to secret support from Iran, British officials fear.
The Foreign Office is investigating whether “current and former nuclear states” helped Kim Jong-Un in his drive to mount nuclear warheads on missiles.
When dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, I've long worried that focusing on Iran alone would be a mistake:
If somebody--Israel or America--is getting ready to hit Iran's nuclear infrastrucuture [sic] based on this assumption, do we know where all the targets are?
I'm not talking about what's in Iran. Are important parts of Iran's nuclear effort in other countries such as North Korea and Syria? And what of Venezuela, which under Hugo Chavez has become best buddies with Ahmadinejad's Iran?
We could hit Iran, believe we've bought ourselves years of time, and then wake up one morning not long after to see a smiling mullah explain that the nuclear detonation in country X was an Iranian bomb being tested. And that Iran has ten more of the same design already.
Later that year, Israel destroyed a reactor in Syria secretly being built by North Korea.
Even if the Iran deal was well negotiated and written--which it was not--the deal would not stop the Iranian progress toward long-range nuclear missiles because allies could do the work for Iran.
Who is actually surprised by this report?
And who will be surprised by a nuclear 9/11 one day, if we don't prevent Islamist nuts from getting nukes?
UPDATE: No worries, dragged down by Russian and Chinese confidence that they aren't the targets of North Korean nukes, the UN is prepared to impose all sanctions short of being effective.
So, you know, whoopdie-freaking-do.
UPDATE: The sanctions will be as effective as I suspect they will be.
