how does building nuclear weapons solve any of the economic problems you correctly identified?
I agree with your dichotomy, though IRI seems to think that with enough patience and wisdom it can retain latent capability
It's a game of numbers, as you know very well. I'm not saying that building one or two nukes would change the situation. There's a certain nuclear threshold that will help Iran to negotiate with the West from a position of power, like China in 80s. It is possibly around 1 MT. The Islamic Republic seems quite reluctant to even get close to actual break-out, let alone nuclear deterrence.
Once Iran has exceed the yield threshold of 1-5 Megatons of TNT, Iran will be able to effectively threaten the US and the West's interests in the region independently.
We are trying to do that now, but whenever things get serious, we have to back off because we are worried about China and Russia stabbing us in the back and we know that they will do that eventually. We cannot rely on Russia or China forever. And Russia may very soon mend their ties with the US with Trump in the office.
We are different from North Korea in the sense that not only we are one of the world's largest owners of energy resources (oil, gas and helium), but we also have enough power over the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el Mandeb Strait.
Our current nuclear program is purely decorative. 10,000 SWU/year is not enough for anything meaningful of civilian nature. We have the Bushehr nuclear reactor now and we are adding two more reactors at Bushehr before 2030. By then, we will need to increase our enrichment capacity to 560,000 SWU UF6/year to keep these reactors running with our own nuclear fuel while our enrichment capacity is below 12,000 SWU UF6/year as of now. Do you see the problem? With current numbers, it takes almost 5 decades for us to enrich enough uranium to keep our reactors running for just one year! If this is not just decorative, what is it then?
The only justifiable reason to keep our enrichment running is if we have a military nuclear program. There is no indication that Iran has a military nuclear program. We have a shortage of electricity in the country. We cannot enrich uranium to 60% only to dilute it or send it abroad at the end.