tolkiens legendarium - Why did Sauron want the Seven Rings back after his return?

Sauron in the second age gave seven rings to the dwarf lords. This had many effects with the main one being greed and avarice.

The reason he gave the dwarves these rings was presumably so that he could corrupt and control them whilst he wore the one ring. If this was not his objective then why give the rings to them in the first place?

Sauron was actively searching for the one ring when he returned, to the extent that the Nazgûl were an inch away from making Frodo into a ringwraith, which would no doubt have ended with Sauron getting the ring eventually.

Sauron being an archetypal dark lord would have been cocky enough to believe that there were no circumstances under which he would not eventually get the ring back.

My question is: if he expected to get the ring back, wouldn't it have been better to leave the dwarves with their remaining rings?

My reasoning: surely he would have been able to carry on the corruption more easily through the ring than by manually finding the dwarves and destroying them with armies.

(BTW I accept that Thrain just happened to come to Dol Guldur and retrieval of the ring may have been a happy coincidence for Sauron).

Answer

Because as Himarm mentions above, they couldn't be enslaved via the rings, and in fact (from Sauron's point of view) the only effects they had on the dwarves were positive:

For the Dwarves had proved untameable by this means. The only power over them that the Rings wielded was to inflame their hearts with a greed of gold and precious things, so that if they lacked them all other good things seemed profitless, and they were filled with wrath and desire for vengeance on all who deprived them. But they were made from their beginning of a kind to resist most steadfastly any domination. Though they could be slain or broken, they could not be reduced to shadows enslaved to another will; and for the same reason their lives were not affected by any Ring, to live either longer or shorter because of it. All the more did Sauron hate the possessors and desire to dispossess them.

From Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, part III: "Durin's Folk", emphasis mine.

Comments

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