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.
.. 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 ..
Fuagf..Good Morning whenever, Don't waste your time on that other post I posted on Obama accepting the Presidential Israeli Medal of Distinction ...THIS ONE is IT!
Of the Greater Israel project of the country’s right wing, which aims at annexing the Palestinian West Bank while keeping the people there stateless, he said,
-- “Better to have a Jewish state on part of the land than have the whole land without the Jewish state,” he said. “Israel should implement the two-state solution for her own sake because if we should lose our majority, and today we are almost equal, we cannot remain a Jewish state or a democratic state . . . That’s the main issue, and to my regret they (the government) do the opposite.” --
That is, Peres thinks that the Likud Party and its partners are living in a fool’s paradise if they believe they can annex the whole of Palestinian territory without getting the Palestinians as Israeli citizens eventually. And then, Peres says, no more Israel as a Jewish state.
Netanyahu is willing to live by the sword more or less permanently in order to accomplish his annexation of the Palestinian West Bank. Peres thinks this approach foolish and dangerous.
-- “The alternative to two states is a continued war and nobody can maintain a war forever. If you say we should live on our sword don’t forget that there are other swords as well . . . --
Peres called bullshit on Netanyahu’s constant refrain that he is ready for peace talks, noting that he never has actually concluded any peace agreements. It is all talk, he said.
-- “A politician and a government should be judged by one way only, on the record of what you do or did, not on what you say . . .” --
Peres remains convinced that assassinated Israeli labor leader Yitzhak Rabin, killed by an Israeli rightwinger, would have made peace with the Palestinians and that his killing was a turning point in Israel’s history.
This is Juan speaking: I went to visit the tomb of Yitzhak Rabin the last time I was in Tel Aviv. I was disappointed that it seemed small and hard to find. He seemed to me to deserve something grander. Maybe what’s left of the Israeli left wing can do something about this.
The big difference between Peres and Netanyahu is that Peres is a realistic Zionist. He has his eyes open about the likely consequences of the annexation of the Palestinian West Bank. The world is turning against Israel because no one likes Apartheid practices or creeping ethnic cleansing. That Israel can usurp the land without absorbing the people seems a remote possibility to Peres.
Another point of realism is that Peres understands that the Arabs and other pro-Palestinian powers won’t be weak and supine forever. Already the Gulf states are building highly sophisticated militaries. Turkey, which under President Tayyip Erdogan is pro-Palestinian, is a member of NATO and has actually had Israel disinvited from some NATO activities. Israel’s nuclear arsenal of several hundred bombs forestalls any conventional invasion. But we increasingly live in an era of micro-wars, in the fight against which Israel has proved vulnerable.
Netanyahu thinks he can fight a forever war, and that he can grab up the Palestinian West Bank while successfully excluding the Palestinians from the rights of citizenship in a state.
Peres is sure he cannot do either.
—–
Related video added by Juan Cole:
AFP from last year: “Former Israeli president Peres calls for Palestinian state .. https://youtu.be/Tey1tUKlF9Y "
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