The way to deal with being treated unfairly by the US, if you can’t win ultimately, is not to act as an equal, but instead to make the US expend a substantial amount of energy keeping you down - BUT just a little bit less energy than would be required to take you out.

Now, maybe Iran has calculated they can win ultimately. We shall see, I guess.

Russia made the calculation that they can win, and they were correct. However, Iran is not Russia.