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Kind of a big assumption here. Are you confident that Iran, if they developed both nuclear weapons and some form of nuclear triad to be enable to credibly threaten retaliation against a first-strike, would then immediately use these new nukes to commit suicide by triggering MAD?
North Korea talks an absurd amount of shit, has nukes, and has never used them. India and Pakistan enjoy a little slap & tickle now and again and yet don't go nuclear.
You really, actually, genuinely think that the people in charge of Iran, and all the people who are involved in the functioning of a nuclear triad/delivery systems/C&C/etc are all down to, what, land a few nukes on Israeli soil (best case) and then get promptly glassed by H bombs? That seems realistic to you?
Iran is significantly more likely to intentionally try and start a global nuclear than the other powers - they are a religious theocracy that acts on religious impulses and is engaged in low tempo warfare (through proxies if nothing else).
That's not the problem though.
Imagine Iran arms itself and then takes control of Hormuz and says "don't intervene" with a nuclear backstop, or attacks Israel (or anyone else in the region). Or does what it is doing right now, with a stark reduction in response options because they say they'll nuke Riyadh if displeased. Temperamentally the Iranian regime is far more likely to engage in is dysregulated instability inducing activity than most regimes because of historical and religious factors. Add nukes into the mix and things get way worse.
What if they finish going through economic instability, Balkanize, and then one of the successor states sells to the highest bidder or loses track of it?
Hell, what if they just give to a proxy group or some other terrorist organization.
You can't model Iran like other powers, a large portion of the state believes what they are saying on the religious front. North Korea is trying to semi-quietly maintain its own existence. India is a real country with real country interests. Pakistan is complicated, but looks nothing like Iran.
Yeah, this is the sort of thing that worries me. I'm actually fairly optimistic about the idea of nuclear proliferation => stability, but Iran's put a lot of investment into proxy forces, and it seems possible that having a nuclear umbrella would actually embolden them to use them more aggressively, not less. They would be operating from a different starting position than, e.g., Poland, Belarus, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, etc.
Furthermore they've arguably demonstrated pretty persuasively that personal deterrence won't be effective on their upper echelons of leadership, which makes nuclear deterrence a bit shakier.
People and organizations follow incentives, Iran (and Hamas) have found some very powerful holes in Western incentives structures and are using them elegantly, the world will absolutely let them get away with some tactics (like grossly increased proxy activity) if the alternative is outright war with a nuclear armed state. That could be an existential risk to Israel, trade through Hormuz, and more. And as you note some of the ways around this (like rational trade deals or assassination) don't really seem on the table.
Ultimately the Western approach to Iran has been a bet - a bet that they will collapse before they do something too dangerous and cause something very very bad. It's a tough situation to manage, getting involved is likely going to cause all kinds of bad things and passive waiting is in many ways more "safe" yet it is equally more risky.
Everyone coming in right now to criticize is effectively betting on a game that is already over. We can explore the counterfactual of watchful waiting and what that might mean, but we can never actually know - and it makes intervention look the worse idea because the costs are actually happening.
However if we sat and did nothing......maybe Iran makes a nuke, uses it on Israel and then Israel destroys everything in the Middle East in a dying fit of pique. That's low likely, but it could have happened if we did nothing. We just don't know.
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