Yes, it is still “going on.”

Last year, the international community celebrated the June 14 election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with much fanfare.

So, too, an interim agreement (which included the U.S. as a signatory) reached with Iran in November 2013 aimed at freezing parts of its nuclear program and rolling back its capability to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The expectation was for a final agreement by July 20. Whether there is a signing or an extension, I sense the Iranians increasingly feel they have the upper hand.

This sense is more real than intuitive, having been strengthened by a recent op-ed by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif published in the Washington Post, which resonates with the defiance and self-confidence that Rouhani himself demonstrated more than a decade ago.

In his piece, Zarif makes clear to Western readers that as far as Tehran is concerned the game is over. To paraphrase the gist of his argument: Iran is now a latent military nuclear power for all intents and purposes, it has no intention of curtailing its technological advancement, and there’s really nothing the international community can do about that.

Chilling, actually, but that should have been expected: Past experience in the nuclear crisis has demonstrated that Iran gains confidence from a protracted process of engagement. Of course, there’s more spin than reality in the Iranian foreign minister’s presentation. For while Tehran has certainly made significant progress in its nuclear program, at this writing it still is not a latent nuclear power.

And what about the sanctions? Well, they’re still in place, of course, taking their toll while Iran continues to seek ways to circumvent them until it can achieve total relief — sanctions removal.

According to recent reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency construction work continues unchecked at the Parchin military installation, where Iran seeks to conceal hydrodynamic experiments carried out to simulate the behavior of a nuclear explosion. This reflects the heart of the crisis: Iran’s nuclear program was not designed for civilian purposes but rather for acquiring nuclear weapons, and the program’s military dimensions represent the core issue.

So try as people may to simply move on, resolving the nuclear issue cannot be achieved without fully addressing the military dimensions, including a thorough investigation by the international agency, and drawing the required conclusions. Indeed, it is unclear how an agreement can be reached concerning the future of Iran’s nuclear program without first solving the continuing mystery of its military nuclear activities. If that past is simply brushed aside, any hope of preventing its future activities will be sheer fantasy.

And by the way: A year into Rouhani’s term, Tehran has never been more involved in subversion, terrorism, backing tyrants and oppressing its own people. Clearing the way for Iran’s military nuclear program will do nothing to change its behavior in this context; on the contrary, it will empower its appetite for hegemony.

Yehuda Yaakov is Israel’s consul general to New England and author of an Israel National Defense College analysis of Iranian President Rouhani’s nuclear negotiating strategy.