“Some of those countries would be unaffected if we retaliated,”
So four 100kT nukes would be shrugged off by a Somalia or Nork or Iran, because they are so primitive they can launch a successful nuke attack against us?
The crux of the conversation was about EMTs, and “regular” nuclear bombs would be quite a different matter.
With EMTs, the people in the middle east and in the undeveloped world wouldn’t be as affected as the more technologically advanced countries.