The Aug 11, 2008 Russ Roberts Econtalk interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita was fascinating. You can directly download the MP3 audio of the interview here. Better, subscribe to the Econtalk series at iTunes.
Russ has a short and very terse set of notes from the interview, including a couple of paragraphs on the threat profile of Iran, and of particular interest, how important is Pres. Ahmadinejad in the Iranian hierarchy? We knew he was effectively a figurehead or “front man” for the Supreme Council. But, typically, de Mesquita’s research puts Ahmadinejad at 18th in the ranking:
Intro. Danger, threats to the United States. Are Iran Ahmadinejad a threat to the U.S.? Threat to our friends. No missiles with sufficient range to reach the U.S. Can it smuggle a bomb into the U.S.? That’s more a matter of movies. Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran, but virtually all power there is held by the Supreme Council. Has veto power, can remove people from office; all people elected including Ahmadinejad serve at the pleasure of the Supreme Council. Interviews, Ahmadinejad ranked 18th in terms of power. At odds with most people’s public perception. Maybe he’s 17th or 19th; but he’s not 3rd or 4th. He is a very outspoken man, says many outrageous things, so he gets a lot of news coverage. Came to power by election from being mayor of Teheran by carving out a constituency of not-very-well educated who saw in him someone who would advance Iranian nationalist sentiment. His power has faded and his party keeps losing by elections. Media attention also because American media has poor or no access to Ali Khamenei, head of the Supreme Council, most powerful person in Iran. Putin had audience with Khamenei; Western leaders only get to see Ahmadinejad. Why would Khamenei want Ahmadinejad in power? Good for floating trial balloons, has a salutary effect in terms of foreign policy; has convinced some people that the Iranian leadership is irrational, and in doing so have attained a certain amount of deterrent clout. Very Schellingesque (Thomas Schelling, Nobel Prize winner), soft application of game theory to national security problems, brinksmanship. Strategy that if you convince the other guy that you’ll drive off the cliff, the other guy gets pretty nervous about it.
At 7:43 in the audio:
Do the 17 people ranked in front of Ahmadinejad have similar views? Do they want to build a nuclear weapon? Ahmadinejad would like to. Ali Khamenei would probably like the capacity to make weapons’ grade fuel, bargaining chip, but a weapon itself could lead to a pre-emptive attack by the Israelis. Others in power much more pragmatic, likely to advocate no more than a fuel cycle at the research level, not to produce enough actually to make a bomb. As a social scientist it makes sense to treat these people as if they are rational. Track record of predictions, last 24 years: 1984 predicted in print who would succeed Ayatollah Khomeini, designed someone; predicted instead shared leadership between Ali Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Khomeini died 5 years later. Based prediction on rationality assumption. Rationality doesn’t mean doing good things. It means doing things based on their own best interest. Logic of Political Survival, previous podcast, leaders want to keep their jobs. Data are consistent with Ali Khamenei’s wanting to stay in power. What would their motivations be to building a nuclear bomb? If they could get far enough without Israel’s attacking, they have a deterrent. India and Pakistan: since they both detonated nuclear weapons they have made an effort to get along. Argument is that deterrence claim is false because Israelis will move beforehand. Iran, Shiite force, is in competition with Al Qaeda, Sunni force to be the dominant leader in the Islamic world. They hate each other. Bomb would be a way of achieving nationalist pride, which keeps the party in power while the economy goes to hell. Rational reasons for wanting to build a nuclear weapon. They say want to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy uses, which is their right.
From other reading we have learned that de Mesquita has done repeated consulting assignments for the CIA. In this interview he said his work on Iran was for “confidential sources”.
Readers not familiar with de Mesquita’s work may conclude from this interview that he is an “Iran expert”. In fact the “Iran experts” called him a quack when in 1984, in “Forecasting Policy Decisions: An Expected Utility Approach to Post-Khomeini Iran,” Political Science (Spring, 1984), pp. 226-236, five years before the eventual succession, he correctly predicted that the successors to Khomeni would be the unknown clerics Rafsanjani and Khameini. His forecasting record has been built entirely upon the application of game theory to the politicians’ incentives — in the setting of their political structure.
Highly recommended.
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor for The Australian:
THERE is, I would guess, somewhere between a 30 and 40 per cent chance that the Bush administration will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of the year.
This is, naturally, a personal judgment. It is based on two weeks of intense conversations I have had with American national security figures.
Washington, all the capitals of Europe and Canberra are united in their determination to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran are obvious. Its leaders are theologically motivated and believe Israel should be wiped off the map. It is the chief global sponsor of terrorism through groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Middle East experts believe a nuclear-armed Iran would soon be followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and perhaps others as well.
Nobody should underestimate what this means.
A senior US Defence Department official told me: “We know how nukes worked in a two-player situation (the US and Russia), or even on the Indian subcontinent. But we don’t know how it works in a multiplayer situation. All those countries with nascent nuclear programs: they’d all be very vulnerable to pre-emption.
“The risk of catastrophic misuse rises dramatically. I don’t think the international community has addressed it with sufficient urgency.”
The same official describes a nuclear-armed Iran as “a very immediate existential threat to Israel, because of the short distances involved and its inability to withstand even one nuclear strike”.
The argument against striking Iranian nuclear facilities is twofold. The first is that the US still has significant diplomatic and financial measures it can take to dissuade the Iranians. It should exhaust those first.
Second, the cost would be too great, both in terms of Iranian retaliation and in terms of the US’s standing in the Muslim world and more broadly.
One of the things the US can still do against Iran is revealed by Seymour Hersh in this week’s The New Yorker. Hersh alleges that the top secret intelligence committee heads of Congress have authorised $400million for covert operations in Iran. This program is designed to gather information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and support opposition, including violence, to Iran’s Government and military.
It is sensible to take what Hersh writes with a grain of salt, but he does have a track record of securing leaks from the CIA. In this case, two separate national security insiders have confirmed to me that the US has a substantial covert operations effort in Iran.
This is all background to the question: What are the chances that George W. Bush will strike Iran, and how do we calculate those chances?
For a start, the Bush administration clearly houses a range of divergent views on this question.
People who know Vice-President Dick Cheney well believe he wants to strike Iran, that he has made a sober judgment that time is running out.
Hersh reports, and others confirmed to me, that Defence Secretary Robert Gates is strongly opposed. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also opposed.
Some analysts believe that in the first Bush administration Cheney won all such arguments, whereas in the second administration Rice is dominant. They take this to mean Bush won’t strike.
I don’t think it’s that simple. It is true that Bush has ceded an enormous amount of national security power to Rice. However, the Bush administration is better seen as having two personalities, the psychology of which rose out of Bush’s peculiar historical circumstances.
Bush understands that he is unpopular across the world and, as a result to some extent, so is the US. Therefore, on every issue where it’s possible, from Africa to North Korea, he presents a kindly, moderate, multilateral face. And that face is Rice.
However, Bush also knows that history will judge him on the outcome in Iraq. So he does absolutely everything he can to win in Iraq. And this means mostly following Cheney’s advice. Remember that for all of Rice’s undoubted sway, she opposed the troop surge in Iraq, as did Gates. The surge went ahead anyway, and was successful.
So at this moment, in the second half of 2008, does the Rice side of Bush or the Cheney side win the argument on Iran?
I think anyone who pronounces dogmatically on that question doesn’t know what they’re talking about. For a start, if the Iranians are caught doing something stupid, the calculations change dramatically.
Here are two more factors of central importance. Figures right across the Bush administration routinely describe a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to Israel. Existential here means a serious threat to Israel’s existence. Another national security figure tells me that if Israel really does regard a nuclear Iran as as existential threat, it would have no alternative but to strike.
Instead it may be that Israel regards a nuclear Iran as an extremely serious threat, says this national security figure.
If that is the case, Israeli spokesmen use the term existential threat in order to make other people take the situation more seriously.
By using the term existential threat, the Bush administration at the very least is itself legitimising the Israeli strike option.
Finally, no one in the Bush administration or anywhere else doubts that the Iranians are pursuing nuclear weapons. A senior Bush administration official (not a hawk) tells me: “It’s my judgment that they (the Iranians) are trying to pursue that capability. People will argue whether that means weaponisation or one step before weaponisation, where they could easily move to weaponisation.”
A senior US Defence official tells me: “They are continuing their efforts to enrich uranium. When they produce fissile material, they will be about six to 12 months away (from building a weapon).”
What, then, of the US National Intelligence Estimate released last December that said Iran had ceased its weaponisation efforts? The same NIE report also concluded that Iran was continuing work on the technically more challenging efforts of enriching uranium and producing long-range missiles.
But the NIE report with its benign finding concerning weaponisation is now held in more or less open contempt throughout the Bush administration. A senior US Defence official tells me: “I’ve never seen an NIE where the director of central intelligence (CIA) has disowned it. The Defence Secretary has said they (the Iranians) are pursuing nuclear weapons, and the director of national intelligence says he’d write it differently now.”
The inherent unpredictability of these matters makes analysis difficult. A year ago, who would have thought that the US would now be doing better in Iraq, and considerably worse in Afghanistan?
A nuclear-armed Iran changes the world for all of us. It is the most important issue on the international agenda today.
I don’t know for sure whether the Bush administration will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Neither, I think, does anybody else. But on all the evidence I can access, I would put the chances about 30 to 40 per cent.
Seekerblog reliable source Fouad Ajami examines how the theocracy has escaped meaningful costs for their terrorism, nuclear or “ordinary”. Excerpt:
…But the clerics have had no interest in any bargain with the U.S. Khomeini and his successors have never trusted their society’s ability to withstand the temptations of normal traffic with America. Furthermore, oil wealth granted Iran’s rulers an exemption from the strictures of economic efficiency. They would pay the price of economic sanctions and deny their country the benefits of access to the American market, because their hold on political power trumped all other concerns.
At any rate, the market was forgiving. The European Union, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and China in later years, would supply Iran with all the technology and imports it needed. Oil revenues enabled the regime to defy the power of outsiders.
Tehran has never needed to remake itself into a warrior state. The skills of the bazaar and the ways of terror have seen it through. They could feud with the United Arab Emirates over small contested islands while turning Dubai into a veritable extension of the Iranian economy. They have been painfully good at probing the limits of tolerable conduct abroad. They have harassed Arab rulers while posing as status quo players at peace with the order of the region.
Iranian author Amir Taheri examines the failed takeover attempt by the Iranian Quds Force.
April 10, 2008 — A GAMBLE that proved too costly.
That’s how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran’s state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous “uprising.” Rather, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq’s second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse.
…The Iranian plan - developed by Revolutionary Guard’s Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of “exporting the Islamic Revolution” - aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral.
…Initially, Quds commanders appeared to have won their bet. Their Special Groups and Mahdi Army allies easily seized control of key areas of Basra when more than 500 Iraqi security personnel abandoned their positions and disappeared into the woodwork.
Soon, however, the tide turned. Maliki proved that he had the courage to lead the new Iraqi Security Force (ISF) into battle, even if that meant confronting Iran. The ISF showed that it had the capacity and the will to fight.
Only a year ago, the ISF had been unable to provide three brigades (some 9,000 men) to help the US-led “surge” restore security in Baghdad. This time, the ISF had no difficulty deploying 15 brigades (30,000 men) for the battle of Basra.
Led by Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, the Iraqi force sent to Basra was the largest that the ISF had put together since its creation five years ago. This was the first time that the ISF was in charge of a major operation from start to finish and was fighting a large, well-armed adversary without US advisers.
…After more than a week of fighting, the Iraqis forced the Quds commanders to call for a cease-fire through Sadr. The Iraqi commander agreed - provided that the Quds force directly guaranteed it. To highlight Iran’s role in the episode, he insisted that the Quds force dispatch a senior commander to finalize the accord.
I’ve not read the referenced Obama speech — but I’ve found Amir Taheri to be a reliable source on Middle East and Iranian affairs.
The American presidential election campaign took a bizarre theological turn recently when Barack Obama accused John McCain of not being able to distinguish Sunnis from Shiites.
The exchange started when Sen. McCain suggested that the Islamic Republic in Iran, a Shiite power, may be helping al Qaeda, a Sunni outfit, in its murderous campaign in Iraq and elsewhere. Basing its position on received wisdom, the Obama camp implied that Sunnis and Shiites, divided as they are by deep doctrinal differences, could not come together to fight the United States and its allies.
[more]
The CIA and U.S. intelligence have gotten a lot of things wrong in recent years, at great cost to our national well-being. A significant part of the problem lies in “analysis,” where data is supposed to be interpreted but is all too often misinterpreted.
Gregory F. Treverton and C. Bryan Gabbard have written a new study of “analytic tradecraft,” published by RAND, that takes up the nature of the problem and looks at some of the solutions being put in place.
Some of the approaches to improving analysis they point to are technological. For example, there is a program called GENOA -II, designed to help intelligence analysts work better in groups. Among other things, it attempts to “automate team processes,” develop “cognitive aids that allow humans and machines to ‘think together’ in real-time about complicated problems,” and find ways to “overcome the biases and limitations of the human cognitive system.”
This sounds great. But count me deeply skeptical. Here’s why.
…Why should there be nine such mistakes when the technology is in place to produce, almost effortlessly, a zero-error rate? The United States is not going fall victim to a surprise attack because of some typos in a RAND study. But we will fall victim to another surprise attack if don’t focus on the fact that the problem facing our intelligence community is not technology but severe shortcomings in the selection of analysts themselves.
See the case of Michael Scheuer, the kooky head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden desk in the 1990’s, for one set of illustrations. See the case of Richard Immerman, the radical professor now in charge of analytic “integrity and standards” for the Intelligence Community, for another set of illustrations.
How many more illustrations do we need?
[more from Gabriel Schoenfeld] Excellent comments - see esp. J.E. Dyer, who links to John Bolton’s commentary on the 2007 NIE.
As CONTENTIONS readers know, the American intelligence community, in an NIE released last December, stated that it had “high confidence” that Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003. As Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testified at the Senate Intelligence Committee this month, weapons design is “the least significant” portion of a nuclear weapons program. The most important is obtaining fissile material. In Iran’s case that would be enriched uranium.
The NIE talked about that issue too. It said that Tehran would probably be able to produce enough uranium for a single bomb sometime “during the 2010-2015 time frame.” Yet not everyone agrees with this view. “New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year,” reports Spiegel Online.
[more]
Michael McConnell raises the point that has been obvious to all observers paying the least bit of attention to Iran’s nuke program. Isn’t it astonishing that media outlets endlessly parrot the words of the unclassified summary of the NIE — without ever thinking about what it means? One has to conclude that the reporters are rather dim bulbs, or that they have a party line to defend.
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