Acquiring nukes seems like the best way for any country to protect themselves against outside interference.
We know that as soon as Gaddafi decommissioned his nukes, Libya was targeted and invaded. If Iraq actually did have nukes, the USA wouldn't have been so brazen to invade.
China, Russia, and North Korea's acquisitions of nukes are also some of the main reasons why they are not easy targets for direct US invasion.
If Iran had nukes, it would drastically limit Israel's ability to indiscriminately attack Iranian assets.
Western policies against nuclear proliferation always seem to target the countries that need them the most to ensure national sovereignty, and never refer to their own nukes.
For example, they always fearmonger about "rogue states" like North Korea getting nukes, while being perfectly okay with Israel's own nukes. It might be best if these policies are ignored entirely.
That is not how nuclear reactors work, they don’t explode and turn the surrounding area into a wasteland.
First, reactors are some of the most impervious buildings in existence. It would be incredibly difficult to significantly damage a reactor in any other way then dozens of large yield bunker buster munitions. It’s to the point where Al Qaeda planned several attacks on US nuclear plants, but had to scrap all the plans as even a jet liner going over a thousand kilometers per hour would barely cause a scratch on the outer reinforced walls.
The fuel in a reactor is also not explosive, and will not meltdown when rendered inert. Further, in the case of an attack, a reactor can be SCRAMed in seconds to kill an ongoing reaction, and fuel rods can be contained. Obliterating a reactor rendered inert would at best leave the site of the reactor room itself moderately radioactive, though cleanup would be easy as the radioactive material would still be in the form of dense fuel grade metals, as they would not have undergone nuclear reaction and been broken down into radionuclide. That is if the reactor room itself could even be breached.
Reactors do not turn into Chernobyl, that was the result of multiple factors all coalescing into a horrific failure due to several protocol and design failures.