WHY IS NOBODY much bothered about North Korea's nuclear weapons and missiles? Because everyone knows that, however rogue a state it might be in which dear leaders execute their uncles, any North Korean politician or general whose finger is anywhere close to the nuclear trigger, is fully aware that if they ever used a nuclear weapon, even against nonnuclear Japan or South Korea, Pyong Yang would become a pile of rubble within hours.

And why is the Western world so exercised about the likelihood of Iran developing a reliable nuclear deterrent? Because it would destroy Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons in the region and reduce the usefulness of its formidable chemical and bacteriological arsenal. To be sure, the Obama tactic of postponing the day when Iran is ready to ‘out’ its nuclear capacity a six-month freeze and talks is much superior to unleashing Israel's itch to bomb, Mossad's asassination of Iranian scientists or the use of cyberwarfare to screw up Iran's centrifuges.

But ‘postponing’ is generally seen as what it is all about. ‘50-50 chance of getting an agreement that would reassure Israel’, Obama said recently, qualifying his optimism. I doubt if any of the Western negotiators expects that the millions of dollars they will spend on all those negotiations during those six months of talks will persuade Iran to renounce its ambition to get a handful of functioning nuclear-tipped missiles sooner or later. As compared with an Israeli bombing the talks could well actually hasten the day when Iran announces its withdrawal from the NPT. Former President Ahmadinejan may have taken a back seat, but it is obviously highly improbable that any amount of relief from (leaky) sanctions will persuade the sweet-talking Rouhani to accept as permanent a situation in which Israel could obliterate Teheran but Iran could only lob a few conventional missiles into Israel.

And would it be a catastrophe if Iran got a few bombs? The real catastrophe would be if Israel bombed Iran the moment Mossad learned that the completion of an effective weapon was imminent. But a nuclear-armed Iran would pose no immediate danger to anybody for the same reason as North Korea keeps its missiles in their silos.