[rgqohbgl] Nuclear warfare for fun and profit

Nuclear weapons are seemingly only defensive weapons: if a country uses one offensively, they will suffer a devastating nuclear counterattack from either the country attacked or its nuclear allies.  Iran, say, cannot offensively launch nuclear strikes against Israel or Saudi Arabia without incurring its own immediate obliteration.

That said, devise a means for a country to surreptitiously use nuclear weapons offensively against an enemy country.

First idea: give the weapon to a terrorist which cannot be traced back to the offensive country.

Second idea is more dramatic: stage a "fake" invasion by the enemy country, then use nuclear weapons against the invading enemy in the guise of defense and counterattack.  The "fake" invasion is militarily real; it's fakeness derives from the surreptitious political engineering done beforehand by the offensive country to induce the enemy country to launch a real military invasion.  This "fake" invasion could even be a nuclear attack, somehow convincing the enemy that incurring nuclear counterattack is "worth it".  This is the kind of intrigue I could imagine the Mossad or CIA doing: both supporting Iran's nuclear program enough to build one bomb (survivable for Israel or Saudi Arabia or the United States), as well as supporting the growth and popularity of religious extremism ("worth it") in Iran, all for engineering an excuse to literally wipe Iran off the map.  Perhaps ultimately to control the oil below.

Inducing a country to become extremist is not difficult: people become nasty when there is only a small piece of pie to fight over:  economic sanctions should work.