These aren't dreams - they're nightmares. If they choose a limited nuclear war, by nuking our fleet, we're checkmated. If we nuke their fleet, that's a lousy trade. If we go to the other end of the spectrum, by initiating a first strike, we risk the destruction of the thousand or so biggest cities and military bases stateside to Russian warheads. There are multiple reasons to avoid serious confrontations over issues that don't involve our interests, with an adversary who has the Samson option (of pulling down the temple over all of our heads). The most important of these reasons is that if we're wrong - even if the possibility is remote - we'll lose a hundred million dead.
And we'll lose that mounting an ill-conceived crusade over an issue that really isn't our problem. The original crusades had as their aim the stemming of Muslim power, and they had the salutary effect of holding Muslim armies in the Levant for a couple fo centuries, until the Mongols devastated them and put that genie back in the bottle for another century or so. This "humanitarian" crusade empowers Sunni Muslims who are the sworn enemy of non-Muslim world. I put humanitarian in quotes because if put in power, they will proceed to exterminate anyone who's not a Sunni Arab.