This article sheds light on the foreign policies of China, Russia, and Turkey towards the controversial Iranian nuclear program and analyzes to what extent their policies are indicative of a security culture that resists hegemony. While advocating a nonhegemonic security culture discursively, China, Russia, and Turkey still partially adhere to hegemonic power structures on a behavioral level. These states` policies are the outcome of a balancing act between resistance to hegemony and hegemonic accommodation. The analysis in this article nuances the idea that counter-hegemonic discourses of rising powers always herald a revisionist power transition. The article thereby makes a contribution to the scholarly debate about emerging powers and the coexistence between declining hegemonic powers and norm-shapers in the making.