Iran & Israel standoff game

👉🏾 There are a lot of commonalities between the Soviet American Cold war and what is happening now between Iran and Israel.

👉🏾 Even before entering the nuclear factor into the game, both sides can inflict damage that is unacceptable by the other – Iran may sustain direct hit to its nuclear weapons’ program which is key to sustaining its ruling theocratic regime, and Israel democracy is expected to get multiple civilian casualties from missiles attracts.

👉🏾 What we see is extreme communications between the hostile sides to remove what is called in game theory “Schelling point” which is a decision that is induced by communication Failing, and thus increase the information in the game.

👉🏾 The second thing we must consider is that in order to assure deterrence, both nations have to be in a situation that neither could gain advantage by attacking the other (MAD) or Mutually Assured Destruction.

👉🏾 This directly connects us to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, assuming each player is rational and limiting risk, by adopting dominant strategy.

👉🏾 However, assuming western values and rationality in the Middle East has failed miserably. A suicide bomber is taking the ultimate risk to inflict some damage to his adversary. So, can this logic be extended?

👉🏾 In the Russian Ukraine war, it works since, Russia still hopes for a long run success and Putin’s kleptocracy is directly threatened by it. Iran is a different game, since Islamic radicalism is spread geographically, while Israel is very densely populated, so Iran my assume that MAD strategy is no longer valid.