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Will we attack Iran?
Matt Yglesias links to some who see an imminent attack. Daniel Drezner offers commentary as well. Here is Seymour Hersh.
The core economic issue is this: in the midst of a "chicken" game, which verbal cues should lead you to conclude that things are going well (poorly) for your side? Alas, I don't know a good treatment of this problem, whether theoretical or experimental.
Under one view, there is no correlation between rumors and real plans. Disregard the rumors.
Alternatively, you may view current rumors as orchestrated. But you might infer the probability of an attack as less likely. The rumors could be an attempt to scare Iran and thus they are a substitute for attacking. A true intent to attack might do better as a (relative) surprise. Of course Iran knows this reasoning also, so why should orchestrated rumors succeed?
Another scenario: perhaps our government is anti-rational, perhaps by the nature of bureaucracy. In this view, the rumors are orchestrated, we usually do what makes no sense, so that means an attack is coming.
How about this? We make lots of noise, hoping to scare Iran. If the noise doesn't work (which it won't) then we might feel we must attack, having put our credibility on the line. Fred Kaplan argues that a tough public stance locks us in; we should instead be letting Teheran receive secret signals that we mean business. The lock-in effect is a danger. But don't assume a (supposedly) secret signal is better; it costs little to send and it might be regarded by the Iranians as a trick, again to be ignored.
What do the betting markets say?: Over at www.tradesports.com, the implied probability of a U.S. or Israeli attack before December is running about 20 percent (look under "Current Events"). For before March 07 it is running about 25 percent. These numbers are up from a few weeks ago.
The bottom line: We will not win this game.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 10, 2006 at 07:46 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Of course Iran knows this reasoning also, so why should orchestrated rumors succeed?Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Posted by: Mitch at Apr 10, 2006 8:53:22 AM
There's also Bush & Co.'s well-documented dishonesty. And the plausible assumption that anything the Iranian government says about nukes is mostly lies. There's a sort of 'second fattest man in the world meets the fattest man in the world' effect.
Posted by: Matt at Apr 10, 2006 9:44:05 AM
The real "secret" signal isn't cheap at all - deploy an extra 3-4 carrier battlegroups and a dozen squadrons of bombers from the U.S. Slate had a good article on what pieces would move in the run up to a bombing campaign, quasi-effective measures to hide them, and occasional feints to keep those watching on their toes.
Posted by: Dylan at Apr 10, 2006 10:25:54 AM
Isn't the danger of the lock-in effect the entire point? Talk is cheap, and since there's a good chance that "not attack" is a dominant strategy, it's quite possible that either the US or Iran will think attacking isn't credible.
It's quite possible that Iran isn't actually trying to avoid an airstrike. Such an action might improve their status among other Muslim states -- see, we really are enemies of the US. As an added bonus, it might unify the Iranian people, which can't be a bad thing when you're an unpopular government. This might lead to the odd conclusion that if the US gov't's priority is to establish a reputation for preemptive attacks on nuclear programs, an attack is the Pareto optimal move and the existence of a nuclear program irrelevant!
Posted by: ryan at Apr 10, 2006 10:35:21 AM
Obviously, I don't actually think that -- unless it happens, in which case you heard it here first
Posted by: ryan at Apr 10, 2006 10:44:57 AM
This is a serious and very disturbing story. It should be clear
that probably this is a "secret" message that is being sent. It
has not appeared in any regular media aside from Hersh's detailed
article in the New Yorker. Hersh is not a usual outlet for this
(or other) administration and has a history of reporting stuff
that is being kept quiet (or trying to be kept quiet). The logic
of the lock-in, which we already saw in the runup to Iraq is
genuinely frightening.
There are some minor errors in the Hersh article, i.e., the Kurds
are in the northwest of Iran, not the northeast. Turkmen are in
the northeast.
Hersh does note that Ayatollah Khameinei has the ultimate authority
over whether to build a bomb, and he has issued a fatwa against
doing so. However, it is like Saddam. Even if Iran says they
will not, and even brings in the IAEA to inspect, our people may
act like they did with Saddam and simply say "we don't believe
them because they lied before." I have been convinced that Israel
would bomb, but the argument that fear of them doing so is partly
driving this is also unpleasantly convincing.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Apr 10, 2006 12:21:24 PM
The rumors also serve to gauge the reactions of the public, and to prepare us for the notion of bombing Iran. (I don't think anyone is foolish enough to think they could get much public support for invading and occupying Iran, but bombing them is a different story.) The Iranians know this, and will see this as a kind of low grade military preparation.
But wars happen all the time, so this kind of negotiation by feint and implication and raised eyebrow does have a certain imprecision to it....
Posted by: albatross at Apr 10, 2006 2:00:37 PM
A 20% chance of a catastrophic war... somehow that doesn't make me feel better.
Posted by: anno-nymous at Apr 10, 2006 2:08:32 PM
The U.S. might launch airstrikes. It might launch airstrikes AND then invade. It will not use bunker-buster nukes. But I think any of the above are unlikely (as in the 20% or less range).
So the chances of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons are low. It seems to me that the real question is -- will Iran pay a high enough price for its defiance that other potential nuclear powers will be deterred? Will the EU, Russia, and China all support and then enforce serious sanctions? To ask the question is to answer it. No, they won't. Which means not only a nuclear Iran, but nuclear proliferation at a much faster rate.
I'm afraid the cold war is going to look awfully good in comparison.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 10, 2006 3:20:36 PM
his might lead to the odd conclusion that if the US gov't's priority is to establish a reputation for preemptive attacks on nuclear programs, an attack is the Pareto optimal move and the existence of a nuclear program irrelevant!
Ryan, that already happened. :^)
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Apr 10, 2006 4:20:13 PM
I take at face value the Iranian threats to retaliate against us if we attack them. And Iran has the capacity to hurt us unless our attack completely destroys Iran's military capacity, so if our leaders also believe the Iranian threats it's unlikely they will attack, because I don't think the political will exists right now to completely destroy Iran's military capacity.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Apr 10, 2006 5:11:10 PM
This game is so simple a child could play it! All I have to do is discern from what I know about you whether you are the sort of man who would put the poison in front of me or the sort of man who would put poison infront of himself!
Bring on the iocane powder ...
Posted by: Jason Ligon at Apr 10, 2006 5:53:23 PM
Barkley has a nice post over at Maxspeaks where he notes Tyler's game of chicken. See my comment Maybe Tyler is right and the 3/19/2003 alleged decision to invade Iraq after Saddam chickened out never really happened. Or maybe Tyler has been asleep for the past 4 years. Or is it that John Kerry was elected President last November and sanity has been restored to the White House. New flash - George W. Bush is truly insane and he's still commander in chief.
Posted by: pgl at Apr 10, 2006 6:00:47 PM
The ultimate irony in all of this is that by calling the alarm on the possibility of the US using tactical nuclear weapons, Seymour Hersh might have actually helped the administration in advancing some of its public relations goals: reinforce the expectation that military action is inevitable, and make that action appear measured and responsible if it only involves conventional weapons.
Meantime, while focusing attention on the question of whether or not this administration is reckless enough to use nuclear weapons, Hersh's article raises another issue that -- at least to my mind -- is in the immediate term more critical: the fact that the White House views (or at least claims that it views) Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a potential Hitler.
This is a wild claim -- though of course we're now used to the administration seeing new Hitlers on the rise wherever it looks. Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- each, according to Bush, Rumsfeld and co., has the potential or aspiration to become the new global tyrant.
To assess whether the Ahmadinejad-potential-Hitler claim has any merit, it's worth looking back at Germany, 1933, during Hitler's first year as Reich Chancellor. Within two months of being sworn in, Hitler had opened Dachau concentration camp to house mostly communist political prisoners who were soon being tortured and murdered. By the summer of 1933, 2 million brownshirts (stormtroopers) were terrorizing Germany and effectively shut down all political opposition. Within a year, through a national campaign of violence and intimidation, the Nazis had won the overwhelming support of the German people.
Three quarters of the way through his first year in office, does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran in 2006, look anything like Germany in 1933? (more...)
Posted by: Paul Woodward at Apr 10, 2006 6:05:31 PM
I'm amazed by people who try to develop systems for poker. Anything to avoid learning any history or anything about the players themselves.
Posted by: Seth Edenbaum at Apr 10, 2006 6:57:59 PM
One solution: we set off a nuclear weapon at one of Iran's critical bombmaking facilities. It looks like an accident, but isn't. We offer assistance: Iran refuses. The seeds of doubt about benefits of nuclear weapons are planted. Ahmadinejad licks his wounds and begins a slow but permanent fall from favor.
Next step: "lather, rinse repeat." We can do this at least twice before anyone would be the wiser. There is little evidence from a nuclear blast that reveals just who set it off. The U.S. has the best nuclear forensics in the world and would be most capable of building nukes that mimicked the signature and the debris of an Iranian-made nuke.
This is by no means an obvious tactic. There were a number of "near-misses" in the early days of U.S. nuclear bomb-making, when workers brought near-critical masses of plutonium together with fatal, although not disastrous, consequences.
Posted by: G. Roper at Apr 11, 2006 12:48:24 AM
G. Roper:
The tactic would not work. You simply underestimate the power propaganda has on defining reality.
If indeed a nuclear disaster were to happen in Iran, there would be no question in the minds of the common Iranians (and many others in the Middle East) that the one to blame would be US and Israel (and after the Mohammad-affair perhaps the Danes as well). No matter what the evidence.
Dictators like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad live of defining and creating external enemies and scapegoats - it is a very effective way to make sure the people you rule do not question your own authority. Ahmadinejad would thus most likely be strenghtened by an attack, making it even more impossible than it is now to chance the government in Iran.
And how would the European allies react? You simply don't know. What you do know is that the reaction would be much more moderate in case US were to use conventional weapons instead.
Just in passing I think all of you miss an important factor that ought to be included in the analysis: Israel.
It's not even a year ago Ahmadinejad without even an attempt to conseal it said that the nukes they are trying to develope are going to be used to remove Israel permanently from the face of the Earth. Do anyone think the Israelies are just going to sit and wait for this to happen, or that they are as deluded as the Europeans - believing it was just another empty threat?
I don't.
Posted by: US at Apr 11, 2006 7:28:31 AM
Oh, I see now that Barkley Rosser did mention Israel in the sentence:
"I have been convinced that Israel
would bomb, but the argument that fear of them doing so is partly
driving this is also unpleasantly convincing."
No question this argument is valid - but as you mention only partly. It works the other way around as well: Both Israel and US would like the other to do the dirty work - and this delays the intervention proces. US is not too popular in the Middle East as it is, so it might be a good idea letting Israel do the bombing. IMHO the chicken-game between Iran and US is not the only one in this proces.
Posted by: US at Apr 11, 2006 7:45:15 AM
Tyler: "Another scenario: perhaps our government is anti-rational, perhaps by the nature of bureaucracy. "
Um, did you mistakenly type 'bureaucracy' when you meant to type 'current political leadership'?
Posted by: Barry at Apr 11, 2006 10:49:24 AM
Nuke 'em 'till they glow.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at Apr 11, 2006 11:18:55 AM
Paul Woodward:
There are two senses in which you may call some foreign leader the next Hitler. In one case, he's a danger to some or all of his own people. That's true of a depressingly large number of leaders, some of whom like wiping out irritating ethnic minorities, others of whom prefer disappearing and torturing political enemies in boxcar lots.
But the sense in which a Hitler type is really scary to the outside world (not just to his own intended victims) is when he's likely to take over a big swath of the surrounding territory and become too dangerous to tangle with. It's hard for me to see any middle-eastern leader who is in a position to do this, though I'm certainly no expert on the region.
Posted by: albatross at Apr 11, 2006 12:26:33 PM
Of course Iran knows this reasoning also, so why should orchestrated rumors succeed?
Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
If the 2 strategies in the poison game are akin to the 2 attack/no attack strategies of the US. In that case the US bluster is equivalent to the poisoner saying "I'm going to put poison in your cup" or orchestrated rumors of the same- it's not a signal of anything and you are just as clueless about which cup holds the poison. In that sense there is no reason why Iran would be swayed one way or another by orchestrated rumors, or US bluster.
The noise the US is making does put its credibility on the line, but the strategy strictly dominates remaining quiet in which case the issue goes to a diplomatic purgatory. I agree with ryan Iran has no incentive to avoid the airstrike from the US as it unites the people in the country, (as well as improving Iran's standing with other muslim countries) and in a country united by war it's likely the incumbent government's image and popularity improves as they become the heroic defender of the realm. Personally I don't think the US can attack. It's international image is shot, especially w.r.t muslims, and they do not have any personal provocation, although at the top level it's George's second term so he wouldn't be beyond risking electoral unpopularity and going out with a bang. If that is true then all the foreplay going on now is irrelevant and the real/only country under threat and the real threat of airstrike must come from Israel.
Posted by: Ray at Apr 11, 2006 5:39:37 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=Z3VHWMAKZSUSBQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2006/04/12/wiran12.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/04/12/ixportaltop.html
today's news!
I think the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's line "Death to America" is slightly worrying. US replies with "Iran is moving in the wrong direction" lolol. Nice euphemism there haha
Posted by: Ray at Apr 12, 2006 3:52:59 AM
Sorry skim read, that should be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's audience that chanted "Death to America".
Posted by: Ray at Apr 12, 2006 3:58:44 AM
Do the Iranians look at the Tradesports numbers? They should.
If they do, the CIA should invest some money and move the market. A sudden jump to 75% probability of a strike might put the fear of Allah in them.
Is this kind of like point shaving on NCAA games, only with nuclear bombs?
Posted by: TomHynes at Apr 13, 2006 12:34:44 PM
