All of the threats, counter threats and other rhetorical bombast that have characterized US/Israeli relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran over the past few months have led to a number of war games or simulations of a conflict between US/Israel and Iran. These exercises have been conducted both within and outside of government circles. While these are only artificial simulations which attempt to replicate real world events, they can be useful in understanding the potential dynamics of an actual conflict.
One of the more interesting of these is a simulation of an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program conducted by The Brookings Institution in Washington. (A summary of the full report is here.)
The organizers began the simulation with a successful Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without telling the US. While the US and Israeli teams initially complained that this was unlikely, they soon reached the conclusion that such an event is very probable. The US team was very angry at Israel for the unilateral attack, but they would have been even angrier if they had told the Israelis not to attack and they had done so anyway.
Another interesting dynamic was that the Israeli team felt that they had created an opportunity for the US to change the Middle East political landscape. To the contrary, the US told the Israelis “that they had made a mess and should go sit in the corner and not do anything else while the United States cleaned it up”. The US called for restraint by all parties and unsuccessfully attempted to open dialogue with Iran.
The Iran team interpreted the US restraint as a sign of weakness and having already lost their nuclear facilities had little to lose by escalating their response and testing the limits of US resolve. While the Iran team demonstrated some restraint, they responded with ballistic missile attacks on Israel and asked Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel with missiles and suicide bombings. These attacks caused few casualties, but brought the Israeli economy to its knees. “A third of our population is living in shelters 24/7.”
The Israeli team pleaded with the US team for permission to retaliate against Lebanon and Gaza and, eventually, the US relented. When Iran stepped over the US redline by mining the Straits of Hormuz and attacking Saudi oil facilities, the US began a massive military buildup in the region. It was clear by the end of the simulation that the US and Iran were headed for a major military conflict.
Such war games have their limitations. In this case one major limitation is a general lack of understanding of the opaque decision making process of the Iranian regime. Their response in the real world could be more or less aggressive. What is clear is that once Pandora’s Box is open, it is very difficult to shut it again.
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