The point of the article as I read it is not Iran directly attacking the US but about proliferating states like China Pakistan Iran and North Korea and the US being attacked on some non-attribution basis by terrorists Hezbollah al Qaida, whoever, its unimportant...etc.
So this is not about a trade-off between pre-emption and being attacked overtly but how to preempt proliferation and covert attacks...when we probably or may not know what is going on beforehand.
I think this is the point of the article; how to adapt our deterrence strategy to countries like Iran having nukes with highly capable proxies and terrorists in the world.
The implication is that if an event happens, the USD may respond anyway against Iran North Korea China and lot of other people irrespective of what we know...that's why I like the argument...if it scares the crap out of these losers maybe they will go around and spend resources and prevent an attack on the US vice our having to do the lifting alone...
I think Iran would like to see the US destroyed but they risk being destroyed if a nuclear event occurs here under this strategy and that may or may not give us or force the cooperation and security we want.
Iran is not safe having nukes under this strategy.
My strategies:
Short Term: Destroy Iran and North Korea now.
Sucks to have just one or a few bombs and an itty bitty country.
Long Term: U.S. gets nuked, everybody gets it.
Sucks to have an attack on somebody with thousands of nukes and able to deliver them from anywhere to anywhere in the world.