It appears that the North Koreans have agreed to allow intrusive inspections of its plutonium creating sites to assure the international community that they are being dismantled.

The Washington Post is reporting that some details still need to be worked out later this year but that apparently the NoKo's have capitulated on the issue of manufacturing plutonium for bombs.

While this is tremendous news, a couple of caveats are in order. First, let's file this one under "We'll believe it when we see it." Kim and his henchmen have a nasty habit of getting very close to agreements and then changing the parameters of what is being negotiated at the last minute. Let's see if he does that this time.

Second, the agreement does not encompass other efforts by the North Koreans to enrich uranium to bomb grade levels. This is ostensibly already under IAEA supervision but many like John Bolton have complained that the inspections regimen isn't intrusive enough and leaves some room for the North Koreans to cheat. Others disagree saying that the monitoring being done by the IAEA is adequate to preventing North Korea from enriching uranium beyond the level needed to run a reactor.

Any way you look at it, do not believe for a moment that this ends the threat from North Korea. If what we heard about last September's attack on a North Korea designed reactor in Syria can be believed, the NoKo's may simply be farming out their WMD to other nations.

This makes them even more dangerous than when they were trying to build their nukes at home. If they are attempting an end run around the US and the west by getting others to build and run their reactors, they are participating in very dangerous proliferation activities.

One more reason not to trust them...