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Like a lot of infrastructure, it's dual use. Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.
That begs the question though, if Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons for decades, why don't they have them already?
From Iran's perspective, they are next door to a hostile nuclear power with illegal nuclear weapons. Iran knows that they won't get the same special dispensation from the international community, so they have to try to ride the line of maintaining some form of deterrent without ending up as an international pariah like North Korea. Historically that has meant having a robust civilian nuclear program, and then using their degree of further enrichment as a bargaining chip. That was the whole point of JCPOA - Iran's breakout time would be regulated through limits on enriched uranium stockpiles and centrifuges in exchange for diplomatic normalization and sanctions relief. These sorts of negotiations have been going on for decades with no prospect of Iran actually producing nukes, despite Israel's constant claims to the contrary. That's my understanding of Joe Kent's statement about IC reporting - he was saying that there was no indication that Iran was planning to break this holding pattern and try to actually produce a nuclear weapon.
From a game theory perspective a way to think about this I suppose is that they are deliberately giving away the information that they are incapable of performing a first strike, but maintaining the potential capability for a delayed second strike. That adds significantly more risk to an Israeli first strike without incurring the full diplomatic consequences of having nuclear weapons. The issue is that the potential for nukes in weeks/months is not the same as having nukes ready to launch - I highly doubt they would have risked a decapitation strike on Iran's top leadership if there was the prospect of immediate nuclear retaliation.
From America's perspective the old status quo was fine - or arguably even beneficial because it discouraged Israel from doing anything too disruptive. The American interest here is essentially just "don't fuck with the oil supply" and by that metric, this conflict is a complete own-goal.
Sure, but everyone else can take notice and make their own reactions accordingly. America (current iteration) and Israel don't like the prospect of them having nukes, so bombing them into the stone age would be an equally valid exercise of those countries government power under the "strategic interest" theory of governance.
It wasn't and hasn't just been Israel. It was a consensus western position that they were seeking nukes until Europeans soured on GWB over Iraq. Was a consensus American position until the Obama bros decided Israel was a colonial state that needed to be eradicated, and remained a consensus opinion on the American right through Biden's presidency. It still largely is with only some super online folks deviating from it over the Israel question.
But like, objectively, they enrich uranium whenever they can, they have crazy leaders who are willing to, and have now been, blown up over enriching uranium. Iran having any uranium is objectively bad for the world, you only don't think that if you hate Israel or America more than you care about the prospect of a mushroom cloud in a major city sometime in the next 10 years.
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Israel is also a sovereign nation, and NOT a member (unlike Iran) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Okay, I'll be more precise - Israel is not a recognized nuclear weapon state ratifier or acceder under the NPT, but still possesses nuclear weapons. That puts them in the same category as North Korea, which followed the agreed-upon withdrawal procedure and is also not bound by the NPT.
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