I think a lot of these things are whether you want to. It's just like people do the impossible with strong will and when there is a complete lack of will they s

I think a lot of these things are whether you want to. It's just like people do the impossible with strong will and when there is a complete lack of will they simply never will. And building weapons and military infrastructure was something the US always wanted - something they learned, because they learned war, weapons and military brings money, power and a form of social infrastructure, while still being able to call it non-socialist. Those are all benefits. Hope that doesn't sound negative, but as a matter of fact the US has really much power, especially with their agencies and real problems with preventing enemy nations from building atomic bombs. On the other hands smaller countries, like Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Austria, ... probably have the resources, monetary and scientifically (else they could buy them), but have a complete lack of interest, just like the ordinary physics student has a complete lack of interest. In fact I even know someone with a startup who is really scared of their technology being used for weapons and he does everything to prevent this (they make amazing drones and Hollywood and stuff are already really interested, cause it has a camera that allows to make pictures/films that could not be done before). He also lost friends because they got into military stuff - like they were killed. Anyway, this article states that these were people who studied physics and were not into weapons and did only use public information, but that's really far from reality of someone who would target and have the real will to create a nuclear weapon. Many circumstances would most likely be way better for someone who really wants to. Now one can do some research on this topic, but the US, kinda as part of their military system also has a huge army when it comes to agencies and invests like an unlimited amount of money into them, so it can pretty much flood Iranian science institutions with agents. I mean, they often had agents that got into way higher political positions than they intended and stuff like that. And military spending is just extreme in the US (look it up on Wikipedia if you haven't seen the figures yet). So basically nuclear weapons are a lot about will, but also fear. I mean looking at the world and how the official US tends to act a lot of states that could have interests in such weapons doesn't want to, cause it would result into a nearly automatic invasion, be it by agents or military from the US. Okay, I don't know how hard it really is. I mean according to the US the Iran was really close (weeks/months away) from the atomic bomb since the eighties or so. I don't know what stopped them, whether it really just were agents or whether there were other reasons, but given these facts and how much the Iran (according to the US! (not saying you can trust the other side more though)) wants this weapons there has to be more than a bit of cyber war, which really was more like public "look how cool we are" thing. I mean they put in agents there to place that worm and I am pretty sure he could have done many things and they just did it for the public.