John Kerry Criticizes North Korean Nuclear Deal to Promote Success of Iran Deal

I guess this means we will no longer see any defenders of the 1994 Agreed Framework considering one of the nation’s top Democrats has now disavowed it:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the recent landmark deal on Iran’s nuclear program grew out of “the failure of the North Korea experience.”

Kerry also said that Iran and North Korea are different, defending the Iranian deal during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing as Republican senators raised concern the Iranian deal could fall apart like the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea.

“Iran has also agreed to accept the additional protocol, and the additional protocol is an outgrowth of the failure of the North Korea experience, which put in additional access requirements precisely so that we do know what Iran is doing,” Kerry said.

The 1994 deal with North Korea, known as the Agreed Framework, required North Korea to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political concessions. But the deal fell apart after the North was found to have been running a secret nuclear program in late 2002.

Kerry stressed that Iran is different from the North.

“Unlike North Korea, that created a nuclear weapon and exploded one and pulled out of the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), Iran has done none of that,” he said.

The North Korea experience is “what gave birth to the additional protocol” in the Iranian deal, Kerry said.  [Yonhap]

I can still remember the good old days when Democrats claimed the failure of the Agreed Framework was all Bush’s fault.  How times have changed.