As the United States and its allies resumed talks over Iran's nuclear program this week, the vexing task of crafting Iran's recent proposal into an enduring agreement began in earnest.
There are many obstacles to an agreement, but among the least examined is the legacy of nuclear-disarmament efforts involving Libya and North Korea. Both cases raise issues that neither Iran nor the U.S. wants to see repeated — but that both will have difficulty avoiding.
For the U.S., North Korea illustrates how a poor but ambitious country developed the bomb by gaming talks and gaining time. For Iran, Moammar Gadhafi's 2003 relinquishment of Libya's weapons of mass destruction demonstrates how a regime, still considered a bête noire by the international community even after normalization of diplomatic relations, arguably forfeited its survival in 2011 by forgoing the chance to build a nuclear deterrent. Digging further into each case illuminates the challenges faced by Iran and its international interlocutors.