“Curious to know why we do not capitulate? Because we are IRANIAN,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote after US envoy Steve Witkoff said President Donald Trump was questioning why Tehran hadn’t yielded to American strain over its nuclear program.
The comment captures a lot of the Islamic Republic’s proud worldview in a single line: that Iran isn’t just one other regional state. Its leaders see the nation as a historic energy that deserves respect.
Whether its confidence in defying US strain will show misplaced stays unclear. A 3rd spherical of indirect US-Iranian talks on Thursday appeared to make progress, in response to Iranian officers and mediator Oman, regardless of Tehran’s refusal to concede on key American calls for.
Much of the disagreement facilities on Iran’s insistence on enriching uranium by itself soil. Uranium is a gas utilized in nuclear energy crops, however when enriched to very excessive ranges, it may be used to make a nuclear weapon.
Iran argues that, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has the best to develop nuclear power for peaceable functions, together with enrichment, and that it shouldn’t be singled out or denied know-how that different members of the NPT possess.
The US acknowledges Iran’s proper to civilian nuclear energy, but it surely doesn’t belief Tehran’s assurances that its enrichment program will stay peaceable.
Here’s what could also be driving Iran’s refusal to budge:
National pleasure and sovereignty
For Tehran, the nuclear program is about its identification as a contemporary nation.
Iran is a rustic of 92 million individuals with a 2,500-year-old civilization that after rivaled the traditional Greeks and Romans. From the empire of Cyrus the Great to the Safavid and the imperial period, its historic self-image is that of a serious energy, not a peripheral state that may be pressured by different international locations.
Despite being ruled by clerics since 1979, Iran continuously deploys nationalistic symbols and invokes its pre-Islamic previous alongside its revolutionary identification. State ideology blends Shiite ideology with pleasure in Persian scientific, cultural and imperial achievements.
What’s extra, the nuclear program – which was in truth created with the assistance of the US – dates again many years and for a lot of Iran’s trendy historical past raised little concern internationally.
Mastering nuclear know-how subsequently isn’t merely a technical achievement however proof of Iran’s sovereignty and development to the extent of world powers.
Tehran’s nuclear program “now functions as a structural pillar of the Islamic Republic – particularly in demonstrating indigenous scientific and technological capability under pressure,” Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher within the Iran and the Shiite Axis Program on the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Israel, instructed NCS.
“As a result, relinquishing the nuclear program would not be viewed merely as a policy concession; it would be perceived domestically as surrendering one of the regime’s foundational achievements.”
The regime’s hardliners have repeatedly warned that giving up on uranium enrichment would quantity to nationwide humiliation.
“If Iran abandoned enrichment entirely, hardliners would likely frame it as surrender, especially if sanctions relief were limited,” mentioned Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program on the Chatham House assume tank in London. The regime may survive a compromise on its nuclear program that’s quick of giving up on enrichment, “but only if it delivers clear economic or strategic gains.”
Despite the latest huge US army buildup round Iran and repeated warnings that the Trump administration is not going to tolerate enrichment, Tehran has not shifted its place. It has refused to supply concessions that go considerably past these it made in the course of the Obama-era 2015 nuclear settlement with world powers – a deal that Trump withdrew from on 2018 – and is now urgent for broader reduction from US sanctions, not simply the nuclear associated sanctions lifted beneath that pact.
It has additionally rejected American efforts to increase negotiations to incorporate its ballistic missile program and assist for armed teams throughout the Middle East.
Experts say Tehran is banking on Trump’s aversion to warfare, viewing his regional army buildup as an effort to realize leverage quite than a prelude to an assault.
“Tehran sees zero enrichment as a strategic red line and is betting that Washington will ultimately accept limits as it has in the past rather than risk escalation,” mentioned Chatham House knowledgeable Vakil. “It assumes Trump prefers a deal he can brand as tougher rather than prolonged confrontation.”
Iran can also be framing a deal as a potential economic win for a Trump administration that has emphasised enterprise and commerce. Iran is among the many world’s largest oil and fuel producers with an enormous client market that has largely been off limits to Western corporations for many years.
Deterrence and leverage
Despite issues that Iran’s nuclear actions shorten its path to a bomb, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed by a non secular edict by no means to pursue a nuclear bomb.
But even when Iran is honest in that declaration, enrichment supplies it highly effective strategic leverage as a nuclear threshold state – one with the potential and infrastructure to construct a weapon ought to it select to sooner or later. In Tehran’s pondering, its potential to alter its thoughts at quick discover is a technique to forestall coercion or assault from its adversaries.
Iran demonstrated the way it makes use of that leverage after Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear settlement, regularly enriching uranium to ranges far past what’s required for civilian energy era. The implicit message to Washington was clear: the 2015 deal positioned internationally verifiable limits on Iran’s enrichment, and with out it, these limits not utilized.
But that technique seems to have backfired. Instead of getting Washington to return to an settlement, it in the end prompted a shock Israeli assault in June 2025 and the primary direct American army strikes on Iranian territory. By the time the US bombed its services, Iran was the one nation with out an lively nuclear weapons program to have enriched uranium to 60%, simply quick of weapons-grade, which is round 90%.
The 12-day summer season warfare “likely forced Tehran to reassess this assumption,” mentioned Citrinowicz. “The scale and precision of US and Israeli strikes demonstrated that threshold status does not immunize Iran from military action.”
Still, Tehran is unlikely to surrender on its nuclear program, Citrinowicz mentioned. From its perspective, “abandoning the nuclear program outright would expose Iran to future coercion and possible attack.”