For a start Iran doesn't have any intercontinental ballistic missiles. What it does appear to have is a variety of missiles of the point and shoot variety, the biggest of which are capable of travelling a couple of thousand kilometers and which
could carry a nuclear warhead. Current thinking is that they don't actually have such a warhead, and if they did, would the detection system be discerning enough to know which missile was carrying the warhead?
Israel has, I believe, a generous stock of American Patriot missiles which are supposed to shoot down such missiles, but which didn't seem capable of stopping all of Saddam's Scud missiles - so I hope that your view of the current missile defence arrangement is accurate. No technology is foolproof.
In any case, it is the warhead flying the other way
FROM Israel, who we know does have nuclear capability and which has the means to deliver it accurately, we should be worried about. Is America going to retaliate against Israel if it makes a pre-emptive strike against Iran (something it has threatened to do itself). Would the Russians care enough to bother?
The bigger response would be from the 2 billion-ish muslims, in every corner of the world, who might be sufficiently p*ssed off on behalf of their brothers in Iran to make the current terrorist threat seem like children's playtime.
It is not the Iranians that frighten me, but the Americans and their self obsessed foreign policies which support Israel's excesses!
Your doomsday scenario may well have some merit, were an attack on (say) Tel Aviv to be made and the world's superpowers thought it a good plan to retaliate on behalf of Israel by blowing one another off the planet, but it has been widely mooted that a limited nuclear strike may not only be possible, but may in some circumstances be a good idea, which is why so many tactical weapons have been created. Such an individual attack would make a great mess, and quite a lot of people downwind may suffer serious health issues, but it wouldn't directly be an end to life as we know it.
There was, as you will remember, a very messy Nuclear accident at Chernobyl some years back. This affected a large swathe of the country and its effects were felt as far away as the UK (ie the fallout had circumnavigated the earth). It killed a few people and made a lot more sick, but life in Russia (and Britain) goes on.
But as you say, in the great political game, we are all expendable
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), the British military capability in the Middle East would also be targeted..............oops, there go the SBA's 
)
