My previous comment:

The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.

A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.

Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.

My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.

opportunity cost-wise, iran could have poured all the money they did in nuclear enrichment instead into missiles, air defense, etc, and they would not be having as much problems as they do now.

nuclear enrichment is extraordinarily expensive and really not all that great of a deterrent when you have them. just look at fairly recent tussels between india, pakistan and china. Russia was invaded and didnt nuke ukraine.

> My advice for rulers … hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.

Just need one flight from Pyongyang. Why suggest involving a major power given that you’ve just laid out the strategic need for nuclear weapons to deter interference from… major powers? Your post lacks coherency.

If nukes are so good why Israel isn't safe? Or in other words you overestimate how useful nukes are. On contrary for Iran them having nukes mean Israel have to guess if coming missiles contain nukes or not and whatever to strike back with their own nukes where as now they can freely sand missiles without escalation concerns.

Anti-nuclear proliferation should now be treated as crime against humanity. Nuclear proliferation is only way to ensure world peace. Every single country should get nukes and capability to use them against each others. And be fully ready to do it.