Acquiring nukes seems like the best way for any country to protect themselves against outside interference.
We know that as soon as Gaddafi decommissioned his nukes, Libya was targeted and invaded. If Iraq actually did have nukes, the USA wouldn’t have been so brazen to invade.
China, Russia, and North Korea’s acquisitions of nukes are also some of the main reasons why they are not easy targets for direct US invasion.
If Iran had nukes, it would drastically limit Israel’s ability to indiscriminately attack Iranian assets.
Western policies against nuclear proliferation always seem to target the countries that need them the most to ensure national sovereignty, and never refer to their own nukes.
For example, they always fearmonger about “rogue states” like North Korea getting nukes, while being perfectly okay with Israel’s own nukes. It might be best if these policies are ignored entirely.
Do they actually spend fewer human resources on the military? They have the fourth largest military in the world, so when combined with their very large military budget the nuclear weapons program doesn’t seem to have helped at all. The DPRK needs to show its military strength to the world to discourage Western aggression because nuclear weapons aren’t enough.
To clarify, I don’t think it’s nonsensical for them to put so many resources into their military. I just wonder how much the nukes actually help.