Some say that the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea are an imminent threat. A better word would be “challenge” – an opportunity for skillful diplomacy in search of mutually advantageous results. The Bush administration seems to be heading in that direction, after a history of frequent dire warnings and threats.

Both Iran and North Korea are at a turning point, weighing charging ahead with nuclear weapons development against negotiating toward a trade-off of abandoning their nuclear weapons programs in return for economic and diplomatic normalization leading to peaceful coexistence. The latter course would be a gamble for both sides, but it could be a gamble worth a determined try.

The present negotiating opportunity comes after an ugly record of threats and name calling by both sides. President Bush set the tone in his 2002 State of the Union address by labeling North Korea, Iran and Iraq an “axis of evil.” When he took the United States into war with Iraq, the other two had reason to worry that they might be next for invasion.

The Bush administration has rightly charged both Iran and North Korea with deception and cheating in pursuing their nuclear weapons programs. But the U.S. hands are not entirely clean. In signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States and other major nuclear powers agreed to phase out their vast stores of nuclear weapons. They have not done so. A specialist in the field, Selig Harrison, wrote this month in the Financial Times: “Until global nuclear arms reductions are once again seriously pursued, would-be nuclear powers will feel entitled to join the nuclear club, just as India did seven years ago.”

A sticking point thus far has been demands by both Iran and North Korea for the right to produce peaceful nuclear power, which is guaranteed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Bush administration has opposed those demands on the ground that the same technology can be switched to the production of atomic weapons and wants the treaty tightened to limit peaceful nuclear development. It has accused Iran, a signer of the treaty, with cheating. North Korea, which has withdrawn from the treaty, admits that it is making nuclear weapons.

But The Wall Street Journal reported this week that new findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) might support Iran’s denial of the cheating charge. The newspaper said that tests conducted for the United Nations agency “indicated that some particles of highly enriched uranium found in Iran were likely brought there on equipment imported from Pakistan and not produced locally.” The IAEA has asked independent laboratories to confirm the test results, but the Journal quoted a diplomat with knowledge of the matter as saying: “This result is impossible to fake. The preliminary test results confirm Iran’s disclosures to the IAEA were accurate.”

So we can chalk up one more success for the international inspectors, whose record often has been better than U.S. and other national intelligence agencies. The lesson suggests that the world should consider letting all nations, including Iran and North Korea, pursue the peaceful production of nuclear energy and rely on strictly enforced IAEA inspections to make sure that those programs are not a cover for nuclear arms production.