WarSclerotic

Netanyahu Not Succeeding with Game Theory.

Amir Rapaport

28/9/2012

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is a great believer of “Game Theory.” Netanyahu is an economist, and Game Theory, which developed as a mathematic branch investigating conflict and strategic situations of decision-makers, developed as a tool that aids in making decisions in economic realms.

This is not the place to refer to all the principles of Game Theory, yet anyone who has seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind” can remember “Nash’s equilibrium” – one of the important theories in the field, which awarded Professor John Nash the Nobel Prize in economy. The Israeli economist Professor Israel Uman also won a Nobel prize for his innovations in the field of Game Theory.

Beyond economy, Game Theory principles have served as supporting theories for decision-making in international relations for decades. Thus, for example, one of the theory’s important principles determines that in order to create a change in an opponent’s decision-making process, and propel him to act against his clear interests, one must establish the credibility of the threat directed at him.

Netanyahu and his people believe that in order to “convince” Tehran to halt the military nuclear program (a clear Iranian interest), the threat coming from the direction of the United States, Israel and the Western countries must be tangible and conclusive. Otherwise, Iran will assume that it is best that it sticks to its plan, and that in the moment of truth, when on the verge of completing the bomb, the US will prefer not to attack because it will not be “worth it” for them, thus allowing them to complete their goal. According to Netanyahu and his fellow thinkers (probably in the IDF and the National Security Council), US President Obama’s amorphous statements that “The US will not accept an Iranian nuclear bomb” will not get the job done, and that Iran will laugh all the way towards a bomb. It might suffer from the financial sanctions, but it will reach its objective.

According to Game Theory, one of the tools used to attain credibility for a certain threat is to have one side decide on “red lines”, so that they cannot back away from them. During the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, the US clarified to the USSR that it is ready to start a nuclear war, which was not an interest of its, in order to prevent missiles from being stationed on Cuban soil. The USSR was convinced that the threat was genuine, and the missiles were eventually returned to Europe without a single shot being fired.

According to Netanyahu and his people, the US positioned a tangible threat before Iran itself, only that this was a while ago, between 2003 and 2005. At the time, Iran genuinely feared a US invasion after the war in Iraq, and halted the country’s nuclear program for the only time since it was established nearly 20 years ago. When the Iranian concern dissipated, the centrifuges began working again. “red lines” aren’t a US invention, nor an inseparable part of just Game Theory.
Israel has set “red lines” itself in the past (even when it declares that it will “not negotiate with abductors,” it is trying to convince terrorists that it isn’t worth their while to carry out abductions; we know the reliability of this Israeli statement, as do Hamas and other organizations). A little reminder: in 1967, Israel declared that it will not agree to the closing of the Straights of Tiran, and stood by its statement even at the cost of starting the Six-Day War. In the War of Attrition, it claimed that it will not accept the stationing of soviet missiles close to the canal, but folded in the end. The price was paid dearly in the Yom Kippur War.

What does this all have to do with Iran and the series of speeches at the UN General Assembly? Netanyahu tried his best to convince the US to define a credible red line for Iran in the framework of Obama’s UN speech, after Obama spoke on Yom Kippur and did not set such a red line. Netanyahu’s own speech at the UN General Assembly also did not succeed in convincing the US to set such a line.

What went wrong in Netanyahu’s game theory? It seems that the prime minister took the theory too far. After all, game theory is a “tool” for aiding in the decision-making process, and not necessarily one that dictates the reality itself. Furthermore, a country can set red lines as its leader sees fit, but it is far more complicated to get another country to set a ‘red line’ in your name.

Moreover: Netanyahu did not succeed in creating credibility for the US threat, in part because of the trust crisis between Israel and the US (one that will intensify if Obama wins his reelection and decides to punish Netanyahu for what is viewed as intervention in internal US affairs in favor of his presidential opponent Mitt Romney).

In the bottom line, as of now: no red line and no trust. It all depends now on the question of just how much Obama means his expression that “the US will not accept an Iranian bomb.” According to the current timetable, the next significant test will apparently come in the next spring, when Iran will be at a distance of one or two months from attaining preliminary military nuclear capability.

Eizenkot
If you were under the impression that “game theory” is taking up the time of senior IDF and Israeli defense industry echelons, against the backdrop of the events taking place at the UN, then you were wrong. The really top issue has to do with the appointment of the IDF’s deputy chief of staff and the coming moment of truth of the Israeli State Comptroller’s report concerning the “Harpaz affair,” which is expected to arrive in the coming week.

The best minds will spend the weekend dealing with the question of how to make Ehud Barak and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi come out good from a public perspective in light of the report. The IDF is currently waiting for an announcement regarding Major General Gadi Eizenkot’s appointment as deputy chief of staff. Amir Oren revealed in Ha’aretz that Israeli State Attorney Yehudah Weinstein approved the appointment in a special decision on the eve of Yom Kippur, despite Eizenkot’s minor involvement in the Harpaz affair (he was the one who consulted with Gabi Siboni and with Tamir Pardo, the current Head of Mossad, about the issue, and according to the chain of events that followed the document made its way to the Israeli Channel 2 TV network).

Despite Weinstein’s opinion, Eizenkot’s appointment is not assured. Barak still has a say in the matter. If Eizenkot is appointed, it does not necessarily mean that he will be the candidate for the role of next IDF chief of staff. The current deputy, Major General Yair Naveh, will be a candidate, even though the media does not appear to be considering him. In either way, Gadi Eizenkot was Ehud Barak’s military secretary 12 years ago in the Ministry of Defense, and if all goes well from his perspective, he will soon join him on the 14th floor of the Genera Staff’s building and among the senior echelon of the Ministry of Defense’s Kiriyah base in Tel Aviv.

Political Survival
Are the nuclear threat and the Harpaz affair the issues most troubling Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, these days? It would appear that there is another “heavy” topic – his own political survival. Barak is currently in the midst of a serious clash with Prime Minister Netanyahu (“Yedioth Aharonot” even revealed on Thursday that Netanyahu and his wife invited Barak’s enemy, Gabi Ashkenazi, and his wife Ronit to a warm meeting). Barak knows that he can no longer be assured a place on the Likud’s list of Knesset members on behalf of himself and his people.

He already took care of former minister Matan Vilnai, who is now the ambassador to China. Another close person, Minister Shalom Simhon, may soon find himself in a desired role of his own. However, how can Barak succeed in passing the ‘election threshold’, namely winning three election mandates (approximately 80,000 votes)? Barak and those close to him believe that he can bring between a mandate and a mandate and a half himself; Orit Noked and Shalom Simhon might be able to bring another mandate from the Kibbutz and Moshav movements, and Shachiv Shnaan (also a Knesset member on behalf of the Barak’s Independence party) will try to bring votes from the Druze sector.

Will all this suffice to pass the election threshold or will it end in a crash? Perhaps Barak will be the surprise of the next elections? No one can tell.

Wary of Israel, Iran Is Said to Blunder in Strikes – NYTimes.com.

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

The Iranian military was so apprehensive about the threat of an Israeli airstrike on its nuclear installations in 2007 and 2008 that it mistakenly fired on civilian airliners and, in one instance, on one of its own military aircraft, according to classified American intelligence reports.

The civilian planes were fired on by surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft batteries and intercepted by Iranian fighter jets.

“Iranian air defense units have taken inappropriate actions dozens of times, including firing antiaircraft artillery and scrambling aircraft against unidentified or misidentified targets,” noted a heavily classified Pentagon intelligence report, which added that the Iranian military’s communications were so inadequate and its training deficiencies so significant that  “misidentification of aircraft will continue.”

At the time, there was growing concern in Israel and the United States over Iran’s nuclear program and discussion of a military response.

In September 2007, Israeli aircraft bombed a nuclear reactor that was under construction in northeast Syria. The following year, Israel conducted a major air exercise over the Mediterranean that appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

In Iran, air defense units were edgy, fearing that an enemy aircraft might try to mimic the flight profile of a civilian airliner, according to a classified Pentagon assessment.

The combination of heightened vigilance and poor command and control led to series of mistakes, according to a highly classified 2008 Pentagon report on “Operational Mishaps by Air Defense Units.”

In June 2007, the report noted, a Revolutionary Guards air defense unit fired a TOR-M1 surface-to-air missile at a civilian airliner. In May 2008, an antiaircraft battery fired on an Iranian reconnaissance drone and a civilian airliner. That same month, an antiaircraft battery fired on an Iranian F-14 fighter jet.

The report and other documents were examined for a new book.

In June 2008, soon after the Israeli air exercise, Iranian air defense units fired at two more civilian aircraft. In one instance, an Iranian F-4 fighter scrambled to intercept an Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad to Tehran to visually inspect the passenger plane. The Iraqi Airways plane was not harmed.

The mishaps were not the first time that air defense forces fired at a civilian aircraft that was believed to be on a military mission. In September 1983, a Soviet pilot shot down a Korean 747 airliner that had strayed from its flight path to Seoul. The Soviet pilot later said in an interview that he knew that he was shooting at a civilian plane, but assumed that it was being used for a spy mission.

Worried about an Israeli strike, the Iranian military began to rehearse attacks of its own. Less than two weeks after Israeli warplanes practiced over the Mediterranean in June 2008, a classified Pentagon report noted, the commander of the Iranian Air Force ordered fighter units to “conduct daily air-to-ground attack training (GAT) at firing ranges resembling the Israeli city of Haifa and the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona,” according to a classified 2008 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Iraqi officials had their own concerns about a possible Israeli strike. On July 3, 2008, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq opened a videoconference with President George W. Bush by expressing his fear that Israel might fly through Iraqi skies to attack Iran.

If Israel violated Iraqi airspace, he said, he would have no choice but to hold the United States responsible, said Mr. Maliki, who said that he could not allow Iraq to “become a battleground.”

“I hear you loud and clear,” Mr. Bush assured Mr. Maliki, according to notes of the conversation.  “Nothing is more important to me than success in Iraq.”

Obama’s Crystal-Clear Promise to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Weapon – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.

Reuters is reporting that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are both satisfied with their non-encounter at the United Nations last week.

Both men “left the U.N. meeting with more than they arrived with: Obama with an assurance that Israel would not attack Iran’s nuclear sites before the November 6 U.S. presidential election, and Netanyahu with a commitment from Obama to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from producing an atomic bomb.”

I found the second half of this statement surprising. If it is indeed news to Netanyahu that Obama has promised to do “whatever it takes” to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, then he hasn’t been listening. He’s not the only one who hasn’t heard the President clearly on the subject. I run into people constantly who believe that the bluffer in this relationship is Obama. Their argument holds that Obama will move toward a strategy of containment soon after the election, and that there is no way he would ever use military force to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

I’m in the camp of people, however, who take him at his word, in part because he’s repeated himself on the subject so many times and in part because he has laid out such an effective argument against containment and for disruption, by force, if necessary. With the help of Armin Rosen, of The Atlantic’s International Channel, I’ve posted below a partial accounting of Obama’s statements on the subject. Of course, it is possible that in a second term, should he win his bid for reelection, he will change his mind on the subject, and it is possible, of course, that Iran will somehow manage to defy his demands. But the record is the record: Given the number of times he’s told the American public, and the world, that he will stop Iran from going nuclear, it is hard to believe that he will suddenly change his mind and back out of his promise.

Here are some of his statements on the subject, going back to his first campaign for the presidency:

June 5, 2008, in Cairo: “I will continue to be clear on the fact that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be profoundly destabilizing for the entire region.It is strongly in America’s interest to prevent such a scenario.”

June 8, 2008, to AIPAC: “The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat…. Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

October 7 2008, in the second presidential debate: “We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it’s unacceptable. And I will do everything that’s required to prevent it. And we will never take military options off the table,”

November 7, 2008, press conference: “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.”

February 27, 2009, speech at Camp Lejeune: “(W)e are focusing on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon; and actively seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab world.”

January 27, 2010, State of the Union address: “And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise.”

July 1, /2010, at the signing of the Iran Sanctions Act: “There should be no doubt —  the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

May 19, 2011, speech on the Middle East: “Now, our opposition to Iran’s intolerance and Iran’s repressive measures, as well as its illicit nuclear program and its support of terror, is well known.”

May 22, 2011, in an address to AIPAC: “You also see our commitment to our shared security in our determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons…. So let me be absolutely clear — we remain committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

October 13,2011, press conference after meeting with South Korean president: “Now, we don’t take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with Iran.”

November 14, 2011, press conference: “So what I did was to speak with President Medvedev, as well as President Hu, and all three of us entirely agree on the objective, which is making sure that Iran does not weaponize nuclear power and that we don’t trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. That’s in the interests of all of us… I have said repeatedly and I will say it today, we are not taking any options off the table, because it’s my firm belief that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would pose a security threat not only to the region but also to the United States.”

December 8, 2011,  press conference: (In response to question about pressuring Iran): “No options off the table means I’m considering all options.”

December 16, 2011, speech to the General Assembly of the Union for Reform Judaism: “Another grave concern — and a threat to the security of Israel, the United States and the world — is Iran’s nuclear program. And that’s why our policy has been absolutely clear: We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons…and that’s why, rest assured, we will take no options off the table. We have been clear.”

January 24, 2012, State of the Union address: “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”

March 2, 2012, interview with Goldblog:  “I… don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”

March 4, 2012, speech to  AIPAC: “I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say That includes all elements of American power:  A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.”

March 5, 2012, remarks after meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu: “… I reserve all options, and my policy here is not going to be one of containment. My policy is prevention of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. And as I indicated yesterday in my speech, when I say all options are at the table, I mean it.”

March 6, 2012, press conference: “And what I have said is, is that we will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon. My policy is not containment; my policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon — because if they get a nuclear weapon that could trigger an arms race in the region, it would undermine our non-proliferation goals, it could potentially fall into the hands of terrorists.

March 14, 2012, remarks after meeting with David Cameron: “…And as I said in a speech just a couple of weeks ago, I am determined not simply to contain Iran that is in possession of a nuclear weapon; I am determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — in part for the reasons that David mentioned… We will do everything we can to resolve this diplomatically, but ultimately, we’ve got to have somebody on the other side of the table who’s taking this seriously.”

September 25, 2012, speech to the United Nations General Assembly: “Make no mistake: A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained…the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”