Comment by ACCount37

You know it. The country that was probably the closest to "developing nuclear weapons" is currently in the process of being bombed to shit for it.

Not the only reason, no. But their nuclear ambitions certainly did contribute to their current predicament.

Nuclear weapons take time, expertize, resources and sustained political will to develop and deploy. If you have all of that, you might be able to put all of that towards climate adaptation instead. Or: go for the nukes and bet hard that you aren't going to get bombed to shit for it. Worked out for NK, but doesn't seem to have worked for Iran.

I think the level of tolerance US has for marginally stable autocracies with nuclear weapons has receded permanently.

Not to mention that merely having a nuclear bomb doesn't automatically allow one to cause WW3. Nuclear weapons were used in a world war already, and that didn't even destroy a single country - let alone the world. It takes a lot of nukes, and a lot of delivery mechanisms, to actually move the needle on the matter of human civilization existing.