Iran's suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is not a turning point. It is business as usual. Tehran's decades-long strategy -- deny, delay, deceive -- continues, and the West still refuses to call it for what it is: a slow-motion march toward nuclear capability. Some commentators are now warning that Iran has suspended cooperation and may finally pursue the bomb, as if that is not already taking place. Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades. It has never stopped.
Iran started and developed its nuclear program in secrecy, lying to the world for years. It has repeatedly breached agreements and violated international limits whenever it saw an opportunity. It built secret facilities at Natanz and Fordow, buried centrifuges deep underground, and enriched uranium to higher levels while misleading international inspectors. Even when inspectors were allowed in, Iran's disclosures were at best partial, its cooperation selective. Every so-called "deal" was a "pause" button, never a stop.
Iran has blocked inspections, cut off surveillance, or expelled international monitors on numerous occasions. It works. Iran's strategy is not just deception, it is an escalation calibrated to force concessions, followed by brief de-escalations to defuse international pressure for a while. Western diplomats, desperate to avoid escalation, invariably rush to the table -- and Iran buys more time.
Some argue that diplomacy is still the best way forward. However, decades of talks have only delivered temporary pauses while Iran has advanced step by step. Sanctions have been imposed, lifted, reimposed, and bypassed. Airstrikes have damaged facilities, but apparently have not permanently destroyed them or the stockpiles that Iran may have already dispersed across multiple secret locations. Deterrence has so far failed to stop Iran's continued progress.
The IAEA considers anything enriched above 20% as weapons-usable. In 2023, the IAEA reported uranium particles enriched to 83.7%, close to weapons-grade of 90%. By early 2025, Iran had a stockpile of approximately 408 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, enough for nine nuclear bombs. It makes sense that a regime pursuing a nuclear program for years would have moved its stockpile to multiple locations before the strikes, to make it difficult to track.
By suspending cooperation with IAEA, Iran evidently wants to exploit the situation and frame this suspension as a direct response to what it portrays as "Western provocation." Tehran, it appears, wants the general audience in the West to believe that this step is reactive, not calculated, as if Iran had been happily cooperating until the West supposedly pushed it too far. Iran's nuclear program, however, did not start under pressure. It started in secret.
What Iran wants is clear: the bomb. Its leaders have implied as much (such as here and here.) Whether through negotiations or defiance, the path leads to the same destination. Iran's ambition is embedded in the regime's doctrine, exporting the revolution, as attributed to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:1
"We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry, 'there is no god but God' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle."
He evidently means the destruction of the entire, in his view corrupt, infidel Western civilization, including the Great Satan, the United States of America. The Little Satan, Israel, it seems, is in the way. Israel has so far contained Iran's ambitions by absorbing the direct costs of this confrontation, including repeated proxy wars, missile attacks, and the constant threat of annihilation.
The problem is not that Iran has "suspended cooperation." The problem is that the West keeps treating each step as if it is a fresh crisis that can still be reversed with enough diplomacy. Meanwhile, Iran continues to advance, using talks as shields to buy time at each step.
Anyone with basic pattern recognition would agree: Iran will not stop, and diplomacy has an extremely low probability of working for a serious, long-term solution. Forty-six years of sanctions, deterrence, and inspections have all failed. Regime change appears the only realistic solution. It is what many Iranians still risk their lives demanding, what most of Iran's neighbors would welcome, and what the broader international community would ultimately benefit from. Iran's suspension of cooperation today is simply the next step in a long, familiar design. The only question is whether the West finally unites to end this grotesque cycle before Iran rebuilds, recovers, and resumes its march toward its bomb.
Amin Sharifi is an expert in international relations and the Middle East. He is presently based in Sweden.
1 Robin Wright's In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade, which discusses the export of the revolution and attributes similar statements to Khomeini, and the U.S. Department of State's Patterns of Global Terrorism reports from the 1980s and 1990s, which often paraphrase or directly quote Khomeini's statements about exporting the revolution.
