In late 2006, on opposite sides of the world, two very different countries took determined steps towards developing nuclear weapons. On 9 October in North-East Asia, North Korea detonated its first nuclear device. Around the same time, in the Middle East, Iran was continuing to defy the demands of the UN Security Council to return to constructive participation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Both North Korea and Iran were originally parties to the NPT, but both had ceased co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as required by the NPT. In each case, a range of multilateral diplomatic initiatives had been pursued in an attempt to bring a defiant nation back into the NPT fold. In each case, efforts had so far proved futile. On 14 October 2006 the Security Council imposed sanctions against North Korea. Two months later, on 23 December, the Council also imposed sanctions against Iran. The two sanctions regimes were broadly similar. Their objective was to prevent North Korea and Iran from gaining access to items, equipment and technical assistance for the development of weapons of mass destruction.

Four years earlier, in late 2002, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had appeared before the Security Council to argue that UN sanctions had failed to prevent Iraq from reconstituting its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Yet in both the North Korean and Iranian instances, the United States was a critical force behind the push for sanctions.