Iran themselves are an NPT signatory! And yet they pursue nuclear weapons while countries like Japan, Germany, Canada and Netherlands do not.

They probably should get started on that as it seems to be the only detterent for genocidal regimes like Russia, US and Israel from attacking you.

No. The greater deterrent is to make the world so complexly integrated that such actions carry an enormous cost.

That whole approach has a bad historical track record-- people tought WW1 "impossible" for the exact same reason.

Not only that, but the only way to do this is to stack the risk against yourself in the case it ever fails.

Just look at the EU/Russia energy dependency. There is good reason that no serious nation does this (intentionally) with actually vital goods like their food supply (not even among allies, really).