For Pyongyang, Mideast offers cautionary nuclear tale

As North Korea considers negotiating over its nukes, it may find lessons in the Middle East, where leaders imperiled, paranoid or pugnacious have long used the doomsday weapon threat to secure a wobbly perch.

It is a delicate dance — and getting the balance wrong can end badly. Holding nuclear weapons, or even chemical weapons, gives a strongman powerful leverage with the region and the world; giving them up can end a pariah status and bring economic benefits.

Saddam Hussein, whose regime used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, gave veiled hints of possessing even more powerful weapons of mass destruction and appears to have bluffed his way into sparking the 2003 U.S. invasion that proved catastrophic for him.