But for iOS you’re forced to use Xcode for implementing certain things like permissions, build and upload.

You can do all that via VSCode as well if you so desire.

Permissions, configurations, etc. are essentially all just XML files and can be edited as such, building, running in simulator and uploading can all be done via CLI.

And if you're not comfortable doing it via the terminal in VSCode, you can also find some extensions.

Personally as a native dev I don't know why you'd want to of course, but to each their own.