Iran can’t have nuclear weapons but North Korea can? There’s logic here.

One thing that’s consistent about U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy is its inconsistency.

After the denuclearization of Libya, the U.S. government embraced a view that all denuclearization should follow the CVID model — for complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization — that succeeded there.

But clearly that is not the case right now, as President Donald Trump moves in opposite directions on Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs. On Iran, Trump has taken the absolutist stance that it should never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. But he is taking the pragmatic, accommodationist approach of negotiation, threat-reduction and managing a nuclear North Korea.

This lack of consistency was unmissable in Trump’s remarkable message last week ordering that U.S. participation in joint military exercises with South Korea be scaled back. The pullback was the first concrete move by the president to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this term, but he took a similar action after his first meeting with Kim in Singapore in 2018, when he suspended all exercises with South Korea. 

In his post, Trump said he sees the lack of nuclear and long-range ICBM tests by North Korea since his return to the presidency as “unthreatening and respectful” behavior. He also, of course, may be trying to move the headlines away from the quagmire in Iran.

Trump has acknowledged that North Korea is an established nuclear power before, even as he refuses to contemplate that concession with Iran. But it would be unfair to call this a double standard. The disparate approaches are rational given the states of the two nuclear programs. Iran’s program — in its nascent stages and based at known locations — was targetable for a preemptive strike. But in North Korea the cat is long out of the bag. With some 60 weapons and enough fissile material for about 30 more, as well as several types of delivery systems, North Korea is not susceptible to a CVID solution.


This preview is a from an op-ed published on The Washington Post on August 19, 2026. Read the rest here.


Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C