To be fair, Iran wants a nuke down the line, and civilian uranium enrichment is a huge stepping stone. There’s lots of technical alternatives they could pursue if they really just want civilian power.

…And that’s kinda understandable. They have a neighbor that randomly bombs their civilians.

Fuck it, let them have one.

Heck, they should get a tiny bit of old Soviet+US stock in some kind of international deal, so they have credible deterrence with the guaranteed stability+security mechanisms (and oversight?) of their weapons.

(To be more specific, Cold War nukes typically have elaborate tiggers and failsafes meant to stop unauthorized parties from detonating them with any nuclear yield, and the old school Soviet and US systems are pretty good. Better for them to have that than an “insecure” home cooked design they waste money on, like the North Koreans allegedly have, IMO. On top of that, they’d have “known” detonation signatures, so if they ever go off everyone would know it’s Iran (defeating the fear of them “losing” a nuke to another party, or a false flag op against Iran)).

I mean, most of it is enriching, by the sound of it, and they've been doing that far beyond any civilian application. As a negotiating tactic, to date, per America's own intelligence.