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I'm definitely not an expert on this, but I follow some folks that are, and I think Iran seems to have decided that being imminently nuclear-capable maximizes its negotiating position. It likely prevents (or at least makes unreasonably costly) an American invasion to force regime change, and doesn't have the international reputation costs of actually being a nuclear state. And it's not like smuggling warheads to Hamas or Hezbollah would be a winning strategy anyway: breaking the near-octogenarian nuclear force taboo even to destroy Tel Aviv probably galvanizes the rest of the world against their religious causes for decades, and probably wouldn't tactically accomplish much. And that's assuming that it wasn't intercepted: evidence of a nuclear plot would probably push even the Biden administration to retaliate heavily on Iran.
Yeah, being sly about it pays off.
Take Japan. They are believed to be able to make nukes at will, launch their satellites using solid fuelled rockets, typically not a first choice, and even had a comet sample-retrieval mission that demonstrated the ability to accurately return spacecraft through the atmosphere.
So demonstrated competence in all three major components of a nuclear ICBM program.
https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/the-legacy-of-shinzo-abe-a-japan-divided-about-nuclear-weapons/
I wonder if Chinese are ever angry about it.
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Giving Hamas a nuclear weapon would be a disaster. If Israel got word, it would preemptively nuke Gaza and then launch against Iran. If Hamas lobbed first, Israel may choose to launch all nukes against all targets on the theory that more are coming anyway. Surely Iran is not that insane? I suppose someone will be eventually.
Iran wouldn’t give Hamas nukes. Primarily because they’re on de facto opposing sides in the Syrian Civil War and, after Israel, the prime target would be the Assad government.
Wait, Hamas are mortal enemies of Assad?
Hamas moved it's political headquarters from Syria to Qatar in late 2011, at the end of the opening year of the Syrian Civil War, rather than join in on Assad's side at a time Assad was trying to pressure anyone approaching a militant group to pick a side or else. Afterwards, it generally supported Qatar's pro-Sunni-jihadist position, rhetorically and possibly with manpower/supplies it had, even as Hezbollah responded to Iranian requests to support Hezbollah.
The dispute between them wouldn't be called a feud, though there were allegations by Hezbollah that Hamas support to anti-Assad parties led to Hezbollah casualties. The Hamas-Hezbollah split was part of the basis of narrative accusations that the Syrian Civil War was an outsider ruse to split the anti-Israeli resistance, with Hamas and Hezbollah being the resistance in question.
The issue largely subsided around '13 a manner I've heard framed as 'agree to disagree,' particularly as Iran increased it's influence with Hamas via supplying it's military wing in Gaza (part of the military-political wing split in Hamas itself). By being patron to both, Hamas-in-Gaza, which is dominated by the military wing, largely stopped agitating for/ publicly supporting the anti-Assad side of the civil war.
However, to the point of being opposite sides: yes, Hamas's default response when Iran needed to invoke allies was to support Iran's enemies, not Iran. This is, and will always be, why the Hamas-Iran relationship is more transactional/utility-driven than the Hezbollah-Iran relationship.
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