When Binyamin Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996, he was presented with an intelligence assessment that Iran would become Israel’s main enemy because of its vision of developing both a nuclear weapon and a large missile force. At the time, most other countries rejected this assessment, including the United States. Since then, much has changed. All leading intelligence services now agree that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has long been determined to put his country in a position where it could develop nuclear weapons at will. Iran is now at that point — if Khamenei asked Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, “Can we develop a nuclear weapon whenever we want?,” the answer would be “yes.”

Yet the past decade has provided another crucial lesson: namely, whenever the Iranian regime has faced an existential threat, it has delayed its nuclear project. In 2003, Iran’s leaders believed that the United States would extend its war in Iraq to tackle the Islamic Republic as well, so they froze their nuclear activities. But they resumed the program after that pause and have since produced hundreds of missiles.

Today, sanctions have proven more effective than some would have imagined, and another round of sanctions is in the wings, representing a potential existential threat to the regime. In response, Tehran has once again made a strategic decision to delay the nuclear project, hoping to stop the momentum of the sanctions while preserving the ability to develop a nuclear weapon “in due time.”

Indeed, new president Hassan Rouhani was selected because he offers the best chance of alleviating the impact of the sanctions. Although he has boasted that he is the best face of a “new Iran,” he does not seek to change the regime’s strategic interests. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presented a simpler problem in some ways — his blunt approach reminded people of Hitler, while Rouhani is more sophisticated, using subtler tactics to gain time.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy.