Why is Iran so bent on having the ability to delivery fission weapons? Easy. They just look around and ask one question: "What is the difference between Iraq and North Korea?" The answer to that question is very simple. North Korea, despite not having the food to keep its people from starving, has the ability through allies and through its own weapons to project terrible destruction beyond its own borders. Iraq, despite first order saber ratteling, did not. If you are making decisions in Iran and you see this very clearly laid out, what course of action would you take? To keep control over your own destiny, we've set the rules of the game up so that you must have the ability to inflect mass damage beyond your own borders. There are plenty of smart people in Iran. That part of the world has produced brilliant people for millennia. They are absolutely capable of creating the technologies they need. It isn't feasible at all for a country the size and economic power of Iran to create an army capable of defending itself against the US. Hell, there are maybe one or two economies in the world capable of this. They are China and China. The old Soviet block bankrupted itself trying. The UE, taken as a whole could certainly do it. Not Iran. They can, however, make messing with them too dangerous. This "porcupine" strategy is the only effective solution for them. Its not much different from the "Mutually Assured Destruction" that has held balance among superpowers so long.

The same strategic issue also explains why they would help an Iraqi insurgency. Simple. Keep the tiger busy chasing the other guy while they build their own defensive (which in this case must be offensive) capability. We keep playing games and calling these bombs "Improvised Explosive Devices" but lets stop kidding ourselves. There is nothing "Improvised" about them any more. They are high technology, well documented, carefully built devices with many manufactured parts being shipped in from Iran and elsewhere.

It is our own bullying policies which have set the ground rules. We have cornered smaller countries and placed them in a situation where they have only one possible way to get enough respect to control their own destiny (for whatever twisted purpose that control will take them). The have to go nuke. If we don't want them to do that, we damn well better change the rules.