Iran and the Bomb: simulating nuclear negotiation

If (when?) Iran gets the bomb, the following things will happen:

Israel’s ability to deter or react to Hezbollah gets tighter;

The U.S. will have to balance Israel’s desire for action with China and Russia’s desire for restraint, and will need to act strong in order to maintain their credibility with Arab world allies;

Iran will be able to guarantee their own security, and their backing will help Hezbollah, but they still stand the risk of being internationally isolated;

China will be a deciding player in whether truly international steps are taken against Iran, and the U.S. and Israel will ignore China at their own peril;

Arab country allegiances will be hotly fought over – the moderate Arab states will hope for the U.S. to stand against Iran but drift towards Iran if they don’t, Syria will play up peace to the West while coordinating with Iran and Hezbollah, and Turkey will continue to drift towards the Iran axis, even if they keep a toe in the Atlantic.

At least, those are the conclusions reached at a recent simulation held in Israel. And while this was hardly a real event or a sure prediction of what’s to come, it does give a good sense of what might be if Iran goes nuclear, and what the U.S., Israel, and the West should do to deal with it.

Over 40 foreign policy experts from Israel, the U.S., and beyond took part last Sunday in “Iran: the Day After” at the InterDisciplinary Center, a university in Herzliya, Israel. The idea of a foreign policy simulation is to play the roles of decision makers faced with new, possible, maybe even extreme political scenarios. Players form teams that represent nations or actors – in this case 19 major Middle East political actors ranging from the U.S. to radical terror organizations – and, in a condensed time window, test the given scenario to answer a research question. A directorship introduces the scenario or new events, facilitates negotiations, and keeps the simulation going in a realistic manner.

In our case (I was part of the team that helped design the scenarios and supported the simulation as part of a class) we wanted to see what the new balance of power would be in the Middle East if Iran goes nuclear and where the red lines would be. Beginning with the scenario of Iranian nuclear weapon capability (announced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and confirmed by the CIA) and a Hezbollah missile attack on the Israeli Defense Ministry in central Tel Aviv, our participants, mostly Israeli experts on their various countries, made decisions and negotiated as if they were the leaders of their respective country or organization. The game went through two main rounds of negotiating, press leaks, decision-making, and policy speeches. The simulation ended with each team giving a summary of their play, views, and positions. A summary panel open to the public followed, featuring MK and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, and former Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

The first round saw the U.S., led by Kurtzer, clash with Israel over the appropriate response to the Hezbollah missile attack; the Israel wanted to go to all-out war while the U.S. insisted on a proportional response. The U.S. position eventually held sway. Iran meanwhile rattled their new nuclear saber, demanding an end to the Gaza siege and no more enemy flights over Lebanon. The round was inconclusive, but it did show that with nuclear power behind the other side, Israel might not be able to go as far in retaliating against Hezbollah.

The second round, however, showed the limits Iran and its allies might face. The simulation directorship introduced a scenario in which Iran transferred radioactive materials to Hezbollah, leading to the possibility of a “dirty bomb” within 6 months. From here, the U.S. team took action, calling for a UN Security Council Resolution to disarm Hezbollah and remove the radioactive materials in Lebanon, negotiating with Russia to propose a deal with Iran where Iran could remove those materials instead of a multinational force, assembling that multinational force when Iran rejected the offer, and, declaring Lebanon in “material breach” of the UNSC Resolution, poised to enter Lebanon to enforce the resolution (at Lebanon’s invitation, actually). The game ended here.

Now, none of this happened. None of this might ever happen. As we played out this simulation, Iran agreed to a uranium-swap deal with Turkey and Brazil. The situation can change before any of this applies.

Nevertheless, simulations can offer insights on the current situation regarding Iran, and certain recommendations can be drawn from those insights. For example, Harvard ran a simulation last December about Western efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. Their main conclusions were that Iran, having the clearest strategy, would continue their enrichment largely unabated, and the U.S. and Israel would butt heads over how to stop Iran. Sound familiar?

With that said, there were a few valuable insights or recommendations that could be culled from our game:

Diplomatic Preemption: Along with recent rumblings that war might break out this summer, there has been a growing consensus that peace with Syria is possible and desirable. The simulation adds further support to this consensus. General Halutz noted in the summary panel that the basic Israel-Syria negotiation issues are fairly straightforward, but that the contextual matters, especially Syria’s association with Iran and Hezbollah, are trickier. In the simulation, the Syrian team played a two-sided diplomatic game, sending messages to the U.S. and through them Israel stressing peace, and at the same time coordinating strategy with Iran and Hezbollah and asking nations like China and Russia to stop the multinational force from entering Lebanon. This matches their behavior in the real world, speaking of both peace and war, their right to choose their friends and their desire to have good relations with the West.

For peace with Syria to work, the U.S. will have to get involved, not only (or even necessarily) as a mediator, but also as a guarantor to the peace and as someone who can enlarge the pie, the same way the U.S. does with the Egypt-Israel peace. Monitoring to ensure Syria leaves their current axis will be needed. And Israel needs to decide that this is truly a policy priority, and to act on it.

On a lesser level due to the speed of the game, the simulation also showed the possibility and necessity for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Arab world, eager to support the U.S. and oppose Iran, would be much more so if Israel and the PA reached peace. The actions in our game suggest that the PA would be willing to ramp up to direct peace talks, and one Arab nation team attempted to bring Hamas back into the fold, hoping to remove them from the Iran-Hezbollah axis as well.

The Iranian threat makes none of those things easier or more realistic. But as General Halutz said, “diplomatic preemption” is now as necessary for Israel as any military actions. Peace along the lines of the Arab Peace Initiative would achieve this.

Coordinating Threats: The first round saw U.S. and Israel stumble on how to respond to the Hezbollah attack. The second round might have done the same on winning Russia and especially China’s support for action against Hezbollah and the radioactive material (a procedural glitch saw the game advance without clear Chinese support).

In light of this and real events, the big challenge for both the U.S. and Israel is to get on the same page with each other and with the other major powers. The U.S. needs to convince Israel to pursue peace and support the U.S. efforts, while Israel needs to remind the U.S. of the threat Iranian nuclear capability poses to them in the interest of getting them to act effectively. They both need to work diplomatically to convince other nations, especially China and Russia, that Iranian nuclear capability poses a serious threat to them. One suggestion could be to frame the crux Iranian threat as the possibility of Iran passing along materials to Hezbollah or other terrorists, rather than any crisis scenario only germane to the Middle East. Some participants argued this was a very unlikely scenario, but the recent U.S. nuclear posture review argued that nuclear terrorism is the greatest nuclear related threat. This threat is salient to China and Russia just as much as it is to the U.S.

Preparing for the Bomb: MK Livni said in the summary panel that the day after is now, and that we have to prepare for Iranian nuclear capability. Ambassador Kurtzer said that the premise of the simulation is one of U.S. and Israeli failure: failure to keep Iran from getting the bomb.

This doesn’t mean efforts to prevent Iranian nuclear capability, whether diplomatic or otherwise, should stop. The threat is a serious one for Israel and the West, and should be considered as such.

But as Livni and others on the panel suggested, the current rhetoric Prime Minister Netanyahu espouses of a second Holocaust is unhelpful. It is inaccurate to suggest attack is imminent, ineffective in winning international support, and hurts Israel’s own interests. Or as one student observer put it, “If Iran gets the bomb, I’m loading up on water and canned food.”

It’s still unclear whether or not Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be stopped, but it doesn’t look good. Neither a turn towards defeatism nor warning of the apocalypse is an effective response: the economic damage of Israelis fleeing the country in the wake of Iranian nuclear capability is as grave a threat as any other under the current rhetoric. Instead, Israel, the U.S., and other allies need to develop a clear policy for dealing with Iran and the threats their nuclear capability poses while framing the new situation as an Iranian compliance failure more than a U.S./Israel policy failure.

It’s going to be difficult, but nothing’s easy regarding Iran, simulated or otherwise.