The immediate reaction from the leaders of the Muslim world was to censure Israel for the destruction of the mosques on Temple Mount so that they could build the Third Temple on their ruins. They put the blame on extremist Jewish factions that had gone on record and stated many times that this was their objective. The Arab leaders said that they did not know if the explosion was a result of "an accidental blast" or a premeditated act by these extremists supported by the right wing government of Israel and added that in any case they held the government accountable. The government of Pakistan, the only Muslim country officially in possession of atomic weapons was under intense pressure by Islamic fundamentalists calling for revenge and urging the government to nuke Israel in order to complete the job the bomb in Jerusalem had started and destroy the Jewish state. Iran, a wannabe nuclear power, threatened to launch missiles with unconventional warheads against Tel-Aviv and Haifa. The leaders of Iran claimed that they were three months short of manufacturing missiles with atomic warheads and said that therefore they could not get involved in an all-out war with Israel. India, whose government had developed close ties with the Israeli defense establishment, threatened Pakistan that it would not sit still while Pakistan deployed nuclear weapons without even being directly attacked. China, no great lover of Pakistan and Muslims, felt that it should deter India from using its own nuclear weapons and issued a warning to India that China would not sit idly if weapons of mass destruction were used in Asia.
The Christian world did not hasten to blame the official Israel government but in a finely phrased diplomatic language stated that "extreme religious factions, Jewish and Islamic stood to gain by removal of all Christian history in Jerusalem". The Vatican, the power broker of the Christian world sadly recalled the saying "How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?" and settled for expressions of moral indignation. However other self-acclaimed champions of Christianity including the New Evangelists in the United States, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia, and even the Catholic Church in France all called for unrestrained nuking of Israel and all Muslim countries in the Middle East. When asked about the morality of this action of indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims and Jews they answered by quoting Pope Innocent III who headed the Albigensian Crusade of 1209 against the Cathar heresy: "Kill them all. Let God lord sort them out". The British government issued its own statement about fragile world peace and made a plea to prevent a nuclear war.
Another cry for action against Muslims and Jews arose from the racist movements in several European countries from Greece, Spain and Italy in the south to Sweden, Norway and Finland in the north. Although not really unexpected the vehemence of these cries for revenge was surprising. Only those who knew how the leaders of these movements felt once they realized that they were duped by Ollie, who had turned out to be a renegade Aryan Swede who converted to Islam could understand the source of their wrath. The racist movements urged their governments to expel all "unwanted elements" as these were involved in acts of terror against Christian assets and set a challenge to "all civilized people". In Europe only France and the UK actually possessed nuclear arms so the pressure from these groups came through the Parliament of the European Union in which the racist factions were represented disproportionately compared to their strength in each country's own parliament.
The traces of the explosives found in the Padova warehouse that undoubtedly were of a North Korean origin pointed a smoking gun towards that country. The US President and both houses of representatives who had been insulted by the repetitive violations of nuclear agreements signed with Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) seized the opportunity and called for a decision of the United Nations Security Council to punish the DPRK for its involvement in the Jerusalem explosion. They suggested imposing severe sanctions that would effectively boycott all trade with that country and bring it beyond the verge of starvation (which was not far from its current position). China opposed this proposal and vetoed it claiming that there was not sufficient evidence for involvement of the DPRK government and that the explosives could have been stolen by a renegade agent provocateur planted in North Korea by the West. The US threatened to carry out an independent operation with its NATO allies and China answered by declaring a state of emergency and put its armed forces and nuclear facilities on a high alert. North Korea started moving troops to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along its border with South Korea and threatened to invade it unless the US and NATO stood down. It also launched three short-range missiles off its east coast as a warning sign.
The US kept a close watch on the DPRK troop movements with its satellites and sent an unmanned drone to fly along the southern side of the DMZ. North Korea saw this as a blatant provocation and shot down the drone that fell on a building in the village of Kijong-dong killing a whole family of five who lived there. South Korea responded by shelling DPRK positions near the demarcation line. The US and Japan supported this act by sending troops to the DMZ and making sure that these troop movements were shown on all TV stations.
From here the situation deteriorated rapidly when these troops were immediately met by DPRK artillery fire. The South Korean response was to send a squadron of F-16 fighters to fly north-west towards the Sea of Japan and then head directly east along the 39th parallel passing over the center of Pyongyang at supersonic speed before crossing into the Korean Bay and returning to their base in South Korea. Windows were shattered all over Pyongyang but the DPRK air defenses managed to shoot down two of the F-16s and capture one of the pilots alive. In response to this provocation, four missiles armed with small tactical nuclear warheads were fired by the North Koreans — two short range missiles targeted Seoul and two long range missiles were aimed at Tokyo. The devastation in both large cities was beyond description and the total number of casualties exceeded half a million human lives that were lost in a blink of the eye.
The leaders of DPRK left Pyongyang and dispersed around the sparsely populated countryside just hours before a megaton retaliatory nuclear strike by the US hit the city. The Chinese could not accept the loss of face of their close ally and launched a missile with a thermonuclear warhead at Honolulu, more or less destroying the entire island of Oahu. The US answered by taking out Shanghai and its surroundings with one of their own 5 Megaton nukes.
The Pakistan government was toppled in a bloody coup d'etat by the Islamic Fundamentalists who seized control of the country's nuclear arsenal. Their first target was the long disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir that had been under control of India since 1947. The population in the Kashmir valley included about 4 million residents, mostly Muslim people, but that did not stop the Fundamentalists who were mainly out to make a point. India struck back by sending a couple of aircraft equipped with small nuclear bombs to fly below the Pakistani radar and drop their bombs in Karachi obliterating the entire seafront of the city. The Fundamentalists also tried to launch a Taimur experimental long range missile from Islamabad towards Israel but due to a malfunction of the missile's engine it fell on Esfahan and fortunately for the residents of this beautiful city the nuclear device did not work properly and only spread some radioactive contamination over a small area.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard attributed this attack to Israel, despite the clear Arab lettering on some of the debris of the missile and its unique features which clearly identified it as the Taimur missile. They launched an all-out attack sending missiles and aircraft directed at the Jewish state. Most were intercepted in mid-flight by the anti-missile Arrow missiles and the aircraft were shot down by Israel's F-15 and F-16 jet fighters, but a few got through and caused havoc in Tel Aviv and Haifa (there was nothing of significance left to hit in Jerusalem). Israel retaliated by destroying all the main cities in Iran and seized the opportunity to do the same in Iraq and Syria sending those countries back to the Stone Age. Lebanon was spared because the French government appealed to Israel to let it be. In Turkey the Islamist government was sent into exile by the army that seized power in a bloodless military coup, and so they managed to keep Turkey out of the nuclear conflict although some fallout did reach it.