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Rich–
Your friend writes, “So in other words [the North Koreans] were able to get less benefit out of actual nuclear weapons than they were able to get out of potential nuclear weapons.”
Sure, if one thinks financial benefits were the only reason the North Koreans developed those weapons. Even if financial blackmail was their highest priority, nuclear weapons also afforded them the obvious benefit of precluding any American move to overthrow the regime.
Iran doesn’t care about financial blackmail. But they definitely care about the latter, as it deters any future American attack in the event of Iranian adventurism. …
We must stop allowing the arms control crowd to define the terms of this debate. Whether America can ultimately deter a nuclear Iran is meaningful only in the event the Iranians actually intend to use nuclear weapons. There may be a 100% chance of that, or a 0% chance of that, and we won’t know until they acquire them (so we’re trusting the Mullahs– how’s that worked out since 1979?).
What’s instead vital, however, is recognizing that there is a 100% chance of a nuclear-armed Iran deterring a conventional America. If a nuclear Iran bullies the Gulf States into raising oil prices, increases aid to Hezbollah by an order of magnitude, and throws even more support to counter-American insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, guess what? A nuclear Iran will get away with ALL of that, because none of those actions will rise to the level worth risking a nuclear war over.
The Cold War lesson to apply here isn’t that nuclear armed states can deter other nuclear armed states from direct conflict. They can, maybe, if we’re both rational actors, and we’re both very lucky.
No, the Cold War lesson is that since the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons, the West couldn’t effectively put a stop to Soviet-supported movements across the globe. And the Soviets knew they had the freedom afforded by their nuclear umbrella at, so they pushed us from Southeast Asia to Africa to Central America, ironically in the process *increasing* the chances of a nuclear war over any of these adventures.
Why are so many people seemingly eager to recreate those days? Does no one remember how lucky we all were to get out alive the first time? As the song goes, the Russians loved their children too, but all it takes is one miscalculation in October 1962 or November 1983 or countless other times to watch the world burn.
And that’s the *optimistic* scenario, the one that assumes the Iranians aren’t building weapons in order to actually, you know, use them.

UPDATE

Friend replies:

Your readers responds to my earlier post by saying, “Even if financial blackmail was their highest priority, nuclear weapons also afforded them the obvious benefit of precluding any American move to overthrow the regime.”
Actually, North Korea’s conventional forces have always been more than deterrent enough to preclude that. They were enough of a deterrent on their own in 1994 to keep Clinton from bombing the little tiny Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the middle of no where, to make no mention of moves to overthrow the regime. There was no chance the North Koreans even had a single nuke then. Today, Iran’s conventional forces are enough to deter an attack against small facilities. Don’t get me wrong, I think allowing North Korea and Iran to go nuclear, as rogue states flouting the legitimate security concerns of other states, is an incredibly reckless policy, far more reckless than military strikes against North Korea in 1994 or Iran now, for many of the reasons your reader cites. I agree that the Iranian regime, armed with nukes, will feel more emboldened and more secure — at first.
My point is that, looking at North Korea and Iran, a policy which systematically denies them any strategic benefit for their nukes, such as revisions to the status quo and strategic economic resources, can hopefully eventually makes these regimes feel humiliated rather than emboldened, and their political security (as regimes) weakened rather strengthened. Certainly North Korea has gotten nothing of what it really hoped to get out of having nukes, and may have indeed worked itself all the way down a blind alley as Paul Wolfowitz used to warn when he was at the Pentagon. It is an insufficient substitute for being able to lay down the law and scare the crap out of these regimes. But the Bush-Obama strategy (to give it its proper name) has potential as a strategy, and there are early signs that it can work. So let’s not turn into the reflexive opposition and dismiss it out of hand. (I call it a Bush-Obama strategy because I don’t think it’s a significant change that we now “engage” the Iranians directly rather than through proxies. There I agree with Kissinger and disagree with Bolton).