Addressing North Korea, Iraq and Iran: Noncompliance, Inspections and Impacts on the Nonproliferation Regime

As the United Nations Security Council was debating a return of international inspectors to Iraq to find and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) admitted it had a clandestine uranium enrichment program. Subsequently, inspectors began work in Iraq under a new Security Council mandate and the threat of military force by the United States, and left before the onset of war. At the same time, North Korea began to restart shutdown nuclear facilities related to its plutonium production program, expelled IAEA inspectors from North Korea, withdrew from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), claimed it possessed nuclear weapons and threatened to build more, to sell them and to test them. During this time, revelations about Iran’s nuclear program were increasing concerns about the threat it posed. Iraqi and North Korean actions highlighted patterns of noncompliance that are substantial and clear and involve violations of their International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreements and their NPT obligations, and in the case of North Korea, of the peninsular denuclearization agreement and the Agreed Framework. Iran has failed meet its safeguards obligations at least. The application of IAEA inspections in Iraq sought to achieve specific goals laid out in relevant Security Council resolutions. The goals for inspections in North Korea and Iran are likely to be much different. In this paper, possible roles and objectives for inspections in these and possible future cases of noncompliance are discussed.