You owe your life to Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov

The usual answer to these issues is "nuclear disarmament".

But that misses the point of why some states acquire nuclear weaponry. Nukes are the great equaliser. With nukes a small state can deter a more powerful state, or combination of states, from attacking with conventional weapons.

It is likely that the state of Israel would not exist if it did not possess a nuclear strike capability. According to Seymour Hirsch it was the prospect of an Israeli nuclear attack on Egypt that motivated the Nixon Administration to rush supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur war of 1973. (See The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy).

Since that near miss it seems to have been the policy of successive American administrations to ensure that Israel always has an edge in conventional weaponry, that it need never again contemplate a nuclear strike. When a quarter of the world's oil pumping capacity is within range of your nuclear strike force you have the kind of influence that a small state surrounded by genocidal neighbours can gain in no other way.

What would an all-out nuclear war in the Middle-East look like?

I shall quote myself from a previous post.

Quite literally a hundred million plus deaths are inevitable. If Israel goes down Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria will cease to exist.

Believe it.

In the end the Israelis will push the button.

What do you think 200 airbursts can do?

Those that don't die immediately will die of disease and starvation. There literally will not be enough people to bury the dead. It will be impossible to get food and water and medicines to the survivors.

It will be the greatest horror the world has seen. In the space of a few hours more people will die than in both world wars combined.

I especially want to draw attention to the words:

"It will be impossible to get food and water and medicines to the survivors"

We have seen how difficult it can be to get relief supplies to people in earthquake zones. In the aftermath of a nuclear war it will be impossible.

Other flashpoints

A war between Israel and its neighbours is not the only likely locus of a nuclear exchange in the near future. Two other possibilities are Pakistan and India and Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have made it very clear that if Iran acquires nukes so will they.