Whiskey, the problem with MAD is it requires what Henry the K called ‘rational actors’. When one party to MAD is nutty as a Payday bar, MAD won’t work.
Basically, you are saying that the way to stop a suicide bomber is to threaten to kill them! Think about that for a while and get back to me.
The second way to get Iran to stop building nukes is the indirect approach of nuking N. Korea.
The NPT has a clause that states nuclear powers cannot nuke non-nuclear nations. So using nukes on Iran would be a violation of the NPT. Nuking N. Korea wouldn’t be, since they have nukes. Plus we are currently in a state of war against the N. Koreans. A War that has already been authorized by the UN, so no violation of any treaties there.
Iran is building nukes because the MDM understand that they are at war with America, even if America hasn’t figured it out yet. They see the USA as a bunch of cowards and having nuclear weapons as a shield from our conventional weapons, which Muslims see as magic.
Show them that having nukes will attract our ire instead of deflecting it and then they will have a reason to stop building nukes.
Right now the MDM have no reason to stop building nukes and several reasons to continue. A couple hundred kilotons of sunshine at the Nork’s reactor site would give the MDM a real good reason to rethink their goals and methods. Not to mention getting Kim Il’s attention.