For decades, the world has been forced to endure a tedious and transparent charade from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The tired refrain, repeated with the conviction of a pathological liar, is that its rapidly advancing nuclear program is intended for ‘peaceful purposes.’ It is a lie so audacious, so consistently disproven, that its continued utterance is an insult to global intelligence. But now, we no longer need to rely on the painstaking work of foreign intelligence agencies to expose this fraud. The Iranian regime, in a spectacular display of hubris, weakness, and self-incriminating panic, has done the job for us. Through its own words and deeds, it has laid bare the truth: its nuclear ambition is a military project, it is failing to protect itself, and it is rotting from the inside out with paranoia.

One need look no further for a public confession than the regime’s own state-sponsored funerals. The pretense of a civilian energy program was literally buried in a massive, televised ceremony where the caskets of top nuclear scientists were paraded alongside those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) most senior commanders and the chief of its ballistic missile program. Let the image sink in. The men who enrich the uranium, the men who command the shock troops, and the men who build the missiles to carry the warheads, all mourned as martyrs of the same singular cause. This was not a somber state event; it was a self-incriminating press conference. The regime, in its grief and arrogance, destroyed its own central lie by visually and publicly linking the three indispensable pillars of a nuclear weapons program: fissile material, military command, and delivery systems. The ‘peaceful’ narrative did not just spring a leak; the regime blew a hole in its hull and held a parade as it sank.

This open admission is coupled with a desperate, frantic attempt at a cover-up that only highlights their culpability. After years of feigning cooperation, Tehran has now slammed the door in the face of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), banning its most senior inspectors and ripping out surveillance cameras from its nuclear sites. Their excuse is perhaps the most damning admission of all. They have openly justified this blatant non-compliance by citing a catastrophic security failure: a successful Israeli intelligence operation that siphoned off ‘sensitive facility data.’ This is not the act of a confident power asserting its sovereignty. It is the panicked flailing of a regime that knows its security is a sieve. They are not hiding their strength; they are hiding their incompetence. They would rather plunge their program into darkness and invite international condemnation than suffer the continuing humiliation of having their secrets stolen from under their noses.

And what secrets they are. While the regime scurries to hide its failures, the true nature of its program marches relentlessly forward. The US’s top general has conceded that the new facility at Isfahan is buried too deep for even our most powerful bunker-buster bombs to reach. The IAEA chief warns that Iran’s breakout time to produce weapons-grade uranium is a ‘matter of months,’ not years. A 900-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium—enough for several bombs—remains unaccounted for. This unstoppable momentum towards the bomb was given its starkest punctuation mark by the confirmed destruction of Iran’s Uranium Metal Conversion Plant. This is not a facility for ‘peaceful’ energy; military analysis confirms its one primary purpose is to perform one of the final, critical steps in creating the explosive metallic core of an atomic bomb. The regime was caught red-handed building the trigger, irrefutably linking its enrichment activities to weaponization.

Yet, this image of a technologically resilient, near-nuclear military power is a grotesque mask hiding a pathetic and brittle reality. The facade of an impenetrable state, master of its own destiny, has crumbled. We saw it in the humiliating television appearance of Ali Shamkhani, a close aide to the Supreme Leader himself. Forced onto state media to prove he was still alive, he was a picture of defeat—visibly injured, propped up with a walking stick, and using a breathing aid. His home had been destroyed in a precision strike, an attack the regime could not prevent at the very heart of its power structure. A state that cannot protect the inner sanctum is not a fearsome opponent; it is a paper tyrant, exposed as vulnerable to its core.

This vulnerability has turned inward, metastasizing into a vicious paranoia that now consumes the state. As the regime fails to fend off external enemies, it has turned on its own people, unleashing what its own state media has chillingly endorsed as a ‘season of traitor-killing.’ A wave of speedy, sham trials and public executions of Iranian citizens accused of spying for Israel serves a dual purpose: it creates a scapegoat for the regime’s own humiliating security failures and provides a pretext for a brutal crackdown on any and all domestic dissent. This is not strength. This is the death rattle of a paranoid system that sees an enemy in every shadow and a traitor in every citizen. It is a regime so terrified of its own people that it must engage in performative bloodshed to maintain a grip on power.

The evidence is overwhelming, and it has been provided, in large part, by the accused. The Iranian regime has confessed through its actions. It has admitted its nuclear program is military. It has admitted it is too incompetent to protect its secrets. It has admitted it is too weak to protect its leaders. And it has admitted it is so paranoid that it must murder its own citizens to feel secure. The world must stop pretending it is dealing with a rational actor playing by any recognizable set of rules. We are witnessing the public implosion of a deceptive, brutal, and dangerously ambitious regime, one that has made its bed in a mausoleum of its own lies.