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- Josh Steinberg
Here's what I took away from those events as the film played out:
In the 24th century, Ambassador Spock has offered to help the Romulans save their dying star. (That's probably why the planet wasn't evacuated.) For whatever reason, the star went supernova earlier than expected, before Spock was able to stop it. Spock still used the Red Matter to end the supernova before it took out anything else, but Romulus was gone. Nero and his crew were pretty devastated by this and felt betrayed; they felt that they, their society, had trusted Spock and by extension, the Vulcans, to save them, and they failed to do so. I wasn't entirely clear on this next point, but the film seems to suggest that Nero may have felt Spock did it on purpose and deceived the Romulans about his intentions. (We know that's not true, obviously.)
Anyway, when Spock releases a small amount of Red Matter to stop the supernova from expanding any further, it created a black hole (or "singularity" as they called it in the film) which sucked Spock through. Nero had wanted to destroy Spock's ship and was following him, which explains how his ship was sucked through as well.
Nero's ship went through last but came out first. I do not believe Nero intended to travel through time. As we see from the first scene aboard his ship, he doesn't know the stardate; I think he must have assumed the black hole put him somewhere else in the universe but not somewhere else in time.
The Red Matter was onboard Spock's ship, so when Nero went through the black hole, he didn't have the weapon. He had the drill on his ship (he did explain that they had been miners), but not the Red Matter. Nero had no idea what would have happened to Spock's ship but expected that it would show up. When his ship does show up some 20 years later, for Spock it was an instant, so he had no idea that a) Nero had followed him through the black hole or that b) Nero had twenty years to be waiting for him. So as soon as he gets through the black hole into the 23rd century, Spock and his ship are captured by Nero. Nero exiles Spock to that ice planet, keeps the Red Matter, and sets off the Vulcan to do his damage.
Nero and his crew didn't want to just wait around; they came through time and didn't expect to and had no idea where or when they were when they made it through. I don't think there was a plan at that point other than "Blow up Spock's ship on sight" initially. But they had all of that time there to figure out what happened, to postulate that Spock would eventually materialize in the 23rd century, and that they could steal the Red Matter from him.
Neither Spock nor Nero intended to time travel. At least that's how I saw it.