Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? .. excerpt ..

just bumped into it again and Bueno de Mesquita's game is interesting ..

At the beginning of the simulation, the positions were what you would expect. The United States and Israel and most of Europe wanted Iran to have virtually no nuclear capacity, so their preferred outcomes were close to zero. In contrast, the Iranian hard-liners were aggressive. “This is not only ‘Build a bomb,’ ” Bueno de Mesquita said, characterizing their position. “It’s probably: ‘We should test a bomb.’ ”

But as the computer model ran forward in time, through 2009 and into 2010, positions shifted. American and Israeli national-security players grudgingly accepted that they could tolerate Iran having some civilian nuclear-energy capacity. Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the religious radicals wavered; then, as the model reached our present day, their power — another variable in Bueno de Mesquita’s model — sagged significantly.

Amid the thousands of rows on the spreadsheet, there’s one called Forecast. It consists of a single number that represents the most likely consensus of all the players. It begins at 160 — bomb-making territory — but by next year settles at 118, where it doesn’t move much. “That’s the outcome,” Bueno de Mesquita said confidently, tapping the screen.

What does 118 mean? It means that Iran won’t make a nuclear bomb. By early 2010, according to the forecast, Iran will be at the brink of developing one, but then it will stop and go no further. If this computer model is right, all the dire portents we’ve seen in recent months — the brutal crackdown on protesters, the dubious confessions, Khamenei’s accusations of American subterfuge — are masking a tectonic shift. The moderates are winning, even if we cannot see that yet.

Could this possibly be what will happen? Certainly Bueno de Mesquita has his critics, who argue that the proprietary software he uses can’t be trusted and may cast doubt on the larger enterprise of making predictions. But he has published a large number of startlingly precise predictions that turned out to be accurate, many of them in peer-reviewed academic journals. For example, five years before Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, Bueno de Mesquita predicted in the journal PS that Khomeini would be succeeded by Ali Khamenei (which he was), who himself would be succeeded by a then-less-well-known cleric named Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ali_akbar_hashemi_rafsanjani/index.html?inline=nyt-per ..(which he may well be). Last year, he forecast when President Pervez Musharraf .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/pervez_musharraf/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. of Pakistan would be forced out of office and was accurate to within a month. In “The Predictioneer’s Game,” a book coming out next month that was written for a popular audience, Bueno de Mesquita offers dozens more stories of his forecasts. And as for Iran’s bomb?

In a year, he said with a wide grin, we’ll know if he’s right.

more .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70582140

.. i really have never been able to reason them really wanting one .. the population is for peaceful nuclear, as is Iran's right, but against having a nuclear bomb .. and cranky leaders are not into country suicide .. so why would they? .. heh, also .. i know fatwas are not for always and don't guarantee anything, but just find it curious that some Iranian fatwas become of real concern, as the death one on Rushdie, yet Khamenei's no nuclear bomb fatwa did a western media Caspar .. invisible and dismissed as hooey ..

Khamenei Takes Control, Forbids Nuclear Bomb - By Professor Juan Cole 03/04/2012
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72852944

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Yes, MEMRI, there is a Fatwa from Khamenei forbidding Nukes -
Posted on 04/22/2012 by Juan

I’m told that MEMRI, which has its origins in Israeli military intelligence,...
http://www.juancole.com/2012/04/yes-memri-there-is-a-fatwa-from-khamenei-forbidding-nukes.html

See also:

Reading Khamenei: The World View of Iran's Most Powerful Leader
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=74160573

[Mohammad Khatami, 1997-2005] Ahmadinejad's fall, Khamenei's rise

"Khamenei’s hostility towards America, Israel and the West in general is only matched by that of the president."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73123099