I think Pakistan is the example you're looking for.

US spend a decade fighting in Afghanistan and 0 years in Pakistan despite UBL being in Pakistan.

Well, it’s not really that simple. Plenty of countries are still sovereign without nuclear weapons.

And even nuclear armed nations aren’t exactly able to use their weapons to devastate an opponents military - see Ukraine and Russia.

Next would be manufacturing your own smartphones. Sad that not making weapons and enslaving your own populace makes you subject to external countries.

Russia was the first nuclear armed state to lose territory to a retired comedian.

That is until some country proves that developing nukes means you no longer have a country.

It looks like it might even be Iran.

I think it's too early to say that the Fordow facility has definitely been destroyed. So far I've only heard Trump make the claim and I'm not inclined to take his word for it.

My understanding is those don't accomplish much militarily since they just give people cancer 30 years later. So you commit a war crime for no military advantage, then what? The other country just hits back with a dirty bomb of their own?

Then it might be better that the country really has WMD.

Otherwise uncle Sam will let you know you have them

Why does the US not use conventional means to remove the Kim dictatorship?

Perceptions of trustworthiness and rationality are orthogonal to a nation's incentives to acquire nukes.

That Iran has been "full-tilt" pursuing nuclear weapons for decades doesn't make sense. Building a nuke isn't that hard, and getting the nuclear material is the hardest part. They've got that worked out. They've had the capability to do so for 20 years now. I defer to the intelligence community; they have the capability to build the bomb within about a year if they chose to do so, and are also not actively attempting to do that. (Until a few days ago at least).

If Kim can get nukes, Khomeini can gets nukes.

This is simply not true.

Iran's religious dictator issued a Fatwa declaring nukes haram. This is why they've consistently stopped at 60% enrichment.

In a religious cult, everything rides on the leadership. He can't just come out and change his mind. He must have a very definitive reason that doesn't disagree with the reasoning in the previous Fatwa. His only real out is an existential threat where threatening a nuke becomes a tool to preserve lives.

Israel and the US have now given him that out. It remains to be seen if he actually takes it.

Bombing a mountain spinning uranium around to find the right isotopes to make death spheres is an act of terrorism against uranium spinning around.

I guess this fatwa doesn’t apply to Pak Army?

> The US does not just send B2 bombers without knowing it's going to work.

I'm old enough to remember when we (the US) ran this exact playbook, except the last letter was 'q' instead of 'n'.

Spoiler: the B-2 played a part in both of the big wars we lost in the last couple of decades. The problem hinges on the definition of "work": yes, the bombs hit what they are aimed at. No, that does not result in operational success without a coherent theory of victory.

They can continue to bomb Israel at will. These minimal attacks will not stop that and there will be no regime change.

> You don't seem to understand that the government of Iran isn't going to exist in about 2 weeks.

This hasn't aged well...unsurprisingly

Just like the famously successful regime change enacted upon Afghanistan.

What makes you think a ground invasion is likely?