Nukes are a pretext. The former Supreme Leader, who the US chose to assassinate, had put a religious fatwa against nuclear weapons. The nut and yahoo in Israel has been saying Iran is a few years away from nukes for 30 years, literally. [1] Clearly they kicked his dog or something, and he just finally found a big enough fool to make his invasion fantasies finally come true.

I think the reason we cling onto that is because it's one way to try to retreat while waving a victory flag. Now we can claim we think the nukes are 'really' destroyed or whatever, and claim mission accomplished.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vc_NanZ-Jos

Yes, because that increases the likelihood of Japan, Korea, Ukraine and even Taiwan getting nuke.