Imagine you once trusted a friend with your money, and that friend disappeared without returning it. Would you trust another friend again so easily? This is exactly what Iran feels about the West when it comes to nuclear agreements. And this one feeling has changed the entire world's political map today.

Let us go back to 2015. After ten long years of European efforts and two years of hard negotiations, a big nuclear deal was signed, called the JCPOA. Iran agreed to open all its nuclear sites for strict international checks, reduce 97% of its highly enriched uranium, and limit enrichment to just 3.75%, which is enough only to produce electricity — not to make a bomb. In return, heavy international sanctions on Iran were lifted. It was a genuine victory for diplomacy. It proved that talking works better than threatening.

But in 2018, the United States walked out of this deal on its own — even though Iran was fully following every condition, as confirmed by the IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog. For Iran, this was not a surprise. It had seen this before.

Way back before 1979, when Iran was under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the West was very friendly with Iran. The United States itself gifted Iran its very first nuclear reactor in 1967, the Tehran Research Reactor. Western countries even offered to build nuclear power plants for Iran. But they also convinced the Shah to stop enriching uranium locally and simply import the fuel instead. Iran agreed. Then the 1979 Islamic Revolution happened, and suddenly everything changed. All agreements collapsed overnight. The fuel supply stopped. The nuclear plant being built by Germany's Kraftwerk Union was abandoned half-finished. France, which had received a $1 billion Iranian loan to join a uranium enrichment consortium called Eurodif, refused to return either the money or the fuel. Iran got its money back only in 1991, more than ten years later. Meanwhile, its half-built Bushehr nuclear power plant was only completed in 2011, with Russian help.

So when the West today says, "Don't worry, you can simply import enriched uranium like Spain does," Iran laughs. Spain is a stable democracy inside the European Union and NATO. Nobody will ever cut off Spain's fuel supply. But Iran is under heavy sanctions, politically isolated, and has been betrayed by agreements multiple times in its own living memory. Importing fuel only works when you trust the supplier. Iran does not.

This is why Iran today calls uranium enrichment its "sovereign and non-negotiable right." The country says its nuclear programme is purely for electricity generation and medical purposes. Iran is also a signed member of the NPT, the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which allows only five countries to have nuclear weapons. Iran points out that India, Pakistan, and especially Israel,  countries that actually have nuclear weapons, were never sanctioned the same way, even though they never signed the NPT. For Iran, this looks like a clear double standard.

Iran's Supreme Leader even issued a religious ruling, a fatwa, in 2003, declaring nuclear weapons to be un-Islamic and strictly forbidden. But the United States remains unconvinced. Right now, America is demanding "zero enrichment," meaning Iran must stop producing any nuclear fuel at all. It is also asking Iran to hand over more than 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity, dangerously close to the 90% level needed for a nuclear weapon, stored deep underground at heavily protected sites.

Some experts believe Iran may be using this enriched stockpile not to actually build a bomb, but as a bargaining chip, to create pressure during negotiations and extract better terms. Whether that is true or not, the trust gap between Iran and the West remains enormous.

The real tragedy here is simple. Diplomacy worked in 2015. A deal was made, conditions were met, and the world became safer. Then one country walked away. And now, years of wars, bombings, sanctions, and hostage crises later, the world is still trying to return to the same table it once left.

History has a habit of sending us back to lessons we refused to learn the first time.

(The author is a science communicator and a defence, aerospace & geopolitical analyst.)