The Iran War Made the North Korea Problem Worse

Forget about the $25 billion. That’s the estimate the Pentagon has tentatively picked for the direct cost of the Iran conflict, a sum that analysts consider laughably lowballed. The true expense of this US-Israeli war of choice is much higher. It must include not just the global economic and humanitarian fallout, but the strategic opportunity costs of other and more urgent problems not dealt with, and perhaps now made impossible to deal with. One example: North Korea.

For decades, during which American presidents have sloppily lumped its dictatorship with other bogeys in the Middle East as part of woolly “axes of evil” and such, North Korea has arguably been the greatest threat to the United States and its treaty allies South Korea and Japan.