ABSTRACT
When Iranian nuclear facilities were uncovered in 2002, hitherto undeclared to the IAEA and therefore suspected to be in breach of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, it did not take long for discursive dividing lines to emerge. Contrary to North Korea's walk away from the NPT in 2003, the Iran case is different in nature. Rather than weakening the treaty regime through another withdrawal from the treaty, the Iranian case was challenging the regime from within. That China and Russia did not derail the sanctions momentum against this background therefore has to be seen as a political decision, as the outcome, it has been argued, of an interaction with structural hegemony. Differences in political prioritisations between the states investigated here persist and account for varying degrees of 'resistance to hegemony' beyond observed patterns of similarity in discourse and behavior. The acceptance of UN-backed international sanctions explains a convergence of rules that are still accepted as governing international relations at large.
