At the United Nations Security Council in September 2026, Russia and China exercised their veto power to extinguish the mandate of independent experts monitoring Iran's nuclear compliance — a quiet but consequential act that removes a shared lantern from an already shadowed diplomatic landscape. The decision reflects not merely a disagreement over Iran, but a deepening fracture in the international order itself, where great-power rivalry now shapes what the world is permitted to know. Without independent oversight, the facts upon which diplomacy depends become contested, and the path toward an