In the months leading up to the brief but violent 12-Day War in June 2025, when U.S. and Israeli strikes targeted Iranian nuclear sites, Tehran quietly but steadily crossed critical nuclear thresholds. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that, by May 17, 2025, Iran’s stockpile had reached 408.6 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. This did not represent a marginal increase but marked a sharp and deliberate acceleration from earlier in the year, leaving the regime only a short step away from weapons-grade capability (Al Jazeera 2025). What makes this surge important is that it unfolded while diplomats attempted to continue negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions (European Parliamentary Research Service 2025).

Iran’s expanded operations and deployment of advanced centrifuges at key facilities, such as Natanz and Fordow, were significantly reducing the breakout time required to produce a nuclear weapon (Psaropoulos 2025). Yet the nuclear program formed only one dimension of a broader strategic posture. Tehran had also expanded its regional reach, pairing advances in missile technology with sustained support for partner militias in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Through these efforts, it projected influence across the Middle East with notable consistency. Decades of heavy sanctions, prolonged diplomatic isolation, and intermittent negotiations designed to curb these activities had done little to slow this trajectory prior to the 12-day war (Atlantic Council 2024).

When we look at these trends together, they point to a fundamental question in international security: why has the continuous application of coercive pressure failed to generate lasting strategic restraint within the Iranian leadership? This article proposes a theoretical refinement of how we view coercive diplomacy, contending that failure stems not from a lack of pressure, but from a persistent credibility deficit regarding the target regime’s survival. It suggests a need to integrate insights from comparative authoritarian politics into the study of nuclear decision-making. Classical frameworks tend to treat coercion as a relatively straight forward bargaining interaction between states, emphasizing credibility, signaling, and cost imposition, while rational models often assume that unitary actors will respond to external incentives. However, a growing body of scholarship suggests that foreign policy is frequently filtered through the messy reality of domestic structures and the survival instincts of the ruling elite.

Drawing on the works of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Jessica L. P. Weeks, this article argues that we cannot truly grasp coercive outcomes if we ignore the internal constraints that bind political leaders. By comparing the trajectories of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya, we can see clear and recurring patterns in how regimes react to external pressure. Rather than treating these as isolated events, this article uses them to refine theory by demonstrating that regime survival assurance operates as a non-negotiable condition for effective coercion (Ameli 2026). Stripped to its essentials, the argument is that coercive diplomacy is doomed to fail the moment that a target regime views compliance as a path to its own destruction instead of a path to security.

Beyond the Four Pillars

For decades, coercive diplomacy—or the art of using “sticks” and “carrots” to change an adversary’s behavior without starting a full-scale war—has been the go-to tool for U.S. foreign policy. Classical theory says that this works when four pillars are in place: threats must be credible, demands must be clear, objectives should be limited, and the incentives must be meaningful (Jakobsen 1998, 54). But the Iranian case demonstrates that these four pillars are not enough to hold the weight of existential stakes. Even under intense pressure and substantial incentives, an authoritarian regime will almost always choose resistance if it believes that concessions could trigger elite fragmentation, a palace coup, or a popular uprising.

This represents a critical gap in how we think about coercive diplomacy. To address this gap, a fifth pillar proposes that the target state must be convinced that complying with demands will not result in the overthrow of the ruling elite. Without this assurance, coercive strategies tend to backfire, hardening resistance instead of encouraging compromise. This creates a security dilemma, where sanctions and threats intended to secure international stability instead make the target regime feel so existentially vulnerable that it views nuclearization as its only rational shield. This fifth pillar is rooted in the internal logic of authoritarian governance. Power in such systems is concentrated among a narrow coalition of political leaders, security officials, and military elites. These actors must continuously manage both external threats and internal vulnerabilities. In these highly centralized states, the perception of strength often carries as much weight as material capability. When leaders interpret sanctions and diplomatic pressure as tools designed to weaken them ahead of regime change, they will conclude that resistance offers the safer path to survival.

Comparative Lessons from Iraq, North Korea, and Libya

History provides some brutal reminders of this dynamic. Take Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated that coercion can work when the military threat is overwhelming and the goal (getting Iraq out of Kuwait) is narrow (Alterman 2003, 277). But once the war ended, the sanctions program offered no credible guarantee that Saddam Hussein would be allowed to remain in power if he cooperated. Saddam Hussein eventually saw the nuclear inspections as a precursor to his own execution, leading him to choose strategic defiance over transparency and cooperation.

North Korea offers a similar story. The 1994 Agreed Framework briefly paused Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for energy aid and a move toward normalization. But as the implementation grew shaky and the North Korean leadership began to doubt their long-term security, they went back to the drawing board. Every diplomatic effort since then........

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