You make the mistake of equating Islam with a religion, when what it is, in fact and deed, is a system of control over every aspect, down to the most personal and minute detail, of it's adherant's lives. It does so in a way that would have made the Nazis and Communists of old green with envy.
Thirty seconds after Iran launches anything at anybody, the President of the United States will be notified. Thirty seconds after that, the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, and Jordanians will beg the rest of the planet to defend them. Within thirty minutes, Iran will will be targeted. Within an hour, Iran will cease to exist.
You cannot maintain power over that which does not exist.
They know this. They know it better than you do. As with the Chinese Communists, the issue is not advancing their agenda, it's about maintaining and finding more subtle uses and expressions of, power. It's about presenting a facade of power and prestige to their own peoples (look! We must be a great country -- we built a nuke! You can forget the part where we're all starving now, okay?). In this case, the creation of a nuclear weapon is the response to a national (ethnic)inferiority complex. They don't intend to use it. They intend to show it off --- to brandish it ---
to push the West's collective nose in it. And to milk it for whatever they can get for it.
It is , for intents and purposes, a substitute penis.
Don't think for a second that some apocalyptic religious duty will drive any of the lunatics into launching a nuke. If that kind of attitude was all that was required, then this planet would have been burned to a cinder a long time ago.
Let me put it to you this way: you have a better chance of seeing Christ walk into your living room, with a six-pack and tub of Extra Crispy, to watch the Super Bowl with you, then you do of seeing an Iranian nuke dropping anywhere.
Repeat after me: Clauswitz was wrong...Clauswitz was wrong...
Time makes all things clear. - Tom