I thought that Nate Silver’s take on President Trump’s war against Iran is worth bringing to your attention. Here are some key passages:
On the foreign policy front, Trump didn’t face any particularly adverse consequences for nabbing Nicolas Maduro under cover of night. On domestic policy, the Supreme Court sometimes bails him out.
Indeed, “you can just do things” is often a sound approach when you’re playing on a low difficulty level. In poker, we’d call this an exploitative strategy. Game theory will tell you that, if your opponent is playing optimally, you have to make some effort to balance and disguise your strategy. You can’t always bluff or the other guy will wise up. But some guys do always fold.
and
TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) has become the slogan for the “Trump put” thesis that I described above. Trump does something that imperils the United States’ economic interests, whether tariffs or threatening to invade Greenland. The Dow sheds 1,000 points, and he reverses course. This doesn’t seem like a very stable equilibrium, however. If traders know that Trump is going to chicken out, they shouldn’t sell off in the first place; otherwise, you could always profit by “buying the dip”. But if markets don’t panic a little bit, how does Trump get the signal that he needs to TACO?
A game-theory equilibrium would almost certainly reveal that both sides are supposed to employ mixed strategies. In other words, sometimes they might be bluffing, but they can’t always be bluffing or there would be no deterrence. Some percentage of the time, they have to follow through with their threats: Trump to do the thing that markets don’t want, and the markets to actually get past the “freak out” stage into sustained, full-blown panic that might cause irreversible damage.
That’s a possible explanation for President Trump’s actions and a prediction for what may happen. Nate treats this as a signaling equilibrium problem; I think that underweights structural constraints. This isn’t poker.
I see it slightly differently. There is no shortage of reasons for the United States to go to war with Iran. Iran’s theocracy has been at war with the United States for almost fifty years. Seizing our embassy, near-daily demonstrations of “Death to America”, support for terrorism, the list is almost endless. But I also think that grievances have an expiration date and, as I’ve said before, there are no “do-overs” in foreign policy.
Israel’s situation is quite different yet. Iran’s theocracy poses an existential danger to Israel as long as it’s in power. But our interests are not identical to Israel’s and we didn’t place Israel in the same neighborhood as a mortal enemy. Those are the considerations that give credence to the hypothesis that Israel pushed President Trump into war. I don’t agree with that theory but those are among the reasons it’s credible. I simply don’t think that Netanyahu or anyone else has that kind of influence on Trump.
You only need look at the present situation to see a sufficient reason for the president’s attacks on Iran. Can we allow the Iranian theocracy to hold the world economy hostage at will by blocking the Straits of Hormuz? The issue is not that Iran can permanently close the Strait of Hormuz but that it can impose repeated, unpredictable disruptions on a passage that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s energy supply, creating intolerable economic risk. That would be the implication of “Trump chickening out”.
Iran could have blockaded the strait but they didnt until now. If that’s your concern then dont bomb Iran. Also, a reminder that we have been at war with Iran for 73 years. Anyway, there are a number of countries that are bad actors but we really cant attack all of them. What’s the tipping point? There was no credible recent change in our relations with them. In any case, we still dont have a clear endpoint or endgame. I guess it’s harder to have one if there wasn’t a clear reason to attack to begin with.
Steve
The question of whether attacking Iran is justified is different from whether it is prudent. I’ve generally opposed attacking Iran on the basis that it isn’t prudent and that the costs and risks (both known and unknown) are not worth the benefits. That’s another reason I supported the JPCOA. As imperfect as it might have been, the alternatives were worse.
As for why now, I don’t think you need game theory to explain it. We are attacking Iran now because it is (seemingly) weak and has no deterrence. It’s proxy network was either destroyed or significantly diminished by Israel after Hamas’ foolish Oct. 7th pogrom. The Assad regime fell. Then Iran foolishly decided to attack Israel directly over its success at taking out its client Hezbollah with the largest single ballistic missile attack in history (at that time). Israel’s retaliation destroyed much of Iran’s air defense. Then Iran decided to enrich uranium up to 60%, a threshold on the cusp of weapons-grade. There was no logical reason for Iran to do this beyond signalling and escalation, and the IAEA formally declared that Iran breached its obligations for the first time since 2005. The next day, Israel started the 12 Day war against Iran’s nuclear program, in which the US participated at the end, and then forced a cessation of hostilities.
This set the stage for the January uprising in Iran, in which the Iranian government admitted to killing thousands, with unofficial estimates reaching the tens of thousands.
So at this point, there is a nexus of events and circumstances that, at least on the surface, change the calculus for attacking Iran that didn’t exist before:
– Iran is in violation of its IAEA obligations
– Iran appears to be internally weak
– Iran’s proxy deterrents are mostly gone or ineffective
– Iran’s offensive capabilities are diminished – Israel took two rounds of ballistic missile and drone attacks with minimal damage.
– Iran’s air defense was already diminished
Just from a practical standpoint, the timing of this war has never been better, in terms of the asymmetry in forces and capabilities.
What we are seeing, though, is that Iran is not as weak internally as believed, and that while it can’t effectively attack Israel or the US, it can attack various civilian and industrial areas in neighboring countries, as well as de facto close the Strait of Hormuz. Its military capabilities are severely diminished but still robust enough to prevent Strait transits and potentially cripple the oil and gas production of the Gulf states.
So this could play out in one of two ways IMO:
– An escalation spiral revolving around attacks on petroleum production. We and/or Israel could obviously wreck Iran’s ability to make and export these products, which would cripple the country. However, Iran can probably do the same to the Gulf States. So the question is whether the US/Israel can out-escalate Iran on this front? I doubt they can – Iran sees this as existential and would likely choose mutual economic suicide.
– An economic race where Iran uses global economic disruption as political pressure to end the war against the US’s ability to open the Strait and protect Gulf state production and export. Normally, I would have said that attriting Iranian capabilities is a question of when, not if, but the lesson from the Houthis and the Red Sea is that, despite a sustained air campaign, we were never really able to completely stop them from attacking shipping.
So how does the US win? We need to be able to out-escalate Iran and force it to capitulate or come to an agreement on our terms, and that probably requires holding Iran’s oil production and distribution under threat while preventing Iran from holding the Gulf States’ production and distribution under threat. It’s not clear to me if that’s possible or how long it would take.