Asymmetry, Binary Outcomes and the Iranian Bomb

In the course of corresponding about the situation with Iran's nuclear program a friend referred to the "delicate" negotiations going on between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  I agree that negotiating with the Iranians is delicate but what in fact are we negotiating?  After all, Iran has only one objective in this dance and that's to get a nuclear capability.  And the United States' only rational alternative is to stop them.  The outcome is binary - either the Ayatollahs get a nuke or they don't.  The Iranians believe that having a nuclear deterrent will greatly advance their goal of uniting the middle east or at least the Shia regions of Syria, Iraq and the Gulf into a unified Caliphate under Persian Shia leadership.  That is why they have endured years of economic sanctions and financial humiliation.  They are not about to give up and capitulate to the 'great satan' just short of the goal line. Particularly when their primary reason for getting the bomb in the first place has been to deter the US (and Israel) from retaliating as they ramp up their aggression.

So what exactly are these 'delicate' negotiations for?  I was never very good at set theory in junior high but I do know my Venn diagrams and I know that two sets that have no elements in common are represented by two circles that don't intersect.  And all of geopolitics is simply figuring out where the two circles do intersect and finding out how to amicably allocate the interests within. When nations face adversaries whose interests don't intersect, where conflict is binary so one side must lose - we no longer call it geopolitics, we call it war.

So again, what is the purpose of these oh so delicate negotiations?  We know Iran's purpose:  take the sanctions pressure off the economy for a time and freeze the US and particularly Israel from intervening in a more 'kinetic' manner.  The Iranians know the longer they draw the negotiations out the closer they get to their goal and they know that an attack on their nuclear facilities during negotiations would seriously damage (a goody two shoes Sunday school teacher of a power like) the United States' prestige and standing in the world community.  So it's a no brainer for the Ayatollahs to jaw jaw until their first successful test.  But what is our incentive to participate in these delicate but oh so useless negotiations?  I honestly don't know but if you've concluded that Iran is going to get a bomb anyway or should have one anyway because it's 'only fair' and if you then decide that there is no point in you or Israel attacking Iran - it will just upset the natives, provoke retaliation and won't stop the bomb anyway, then 'negotiations' are a way to keep your allies in the region and the opposition back home off of your back until the inevitable fait accompli shows up.  Jaw Jaw is the easiest way to avoid acting.  Call it the Neville Chamberlain gambit.

But the problem with thinking that this is just a new Munich is that Munich actually was an attempt to reapportion the intersecting interests between Germany and its neighbors in a way that would appease Germany (in the old non-pejorative definition of appease meaning: giving them just enough so they'll go pester someone else) .  In other words it wasn't objectively insane to enter into negotiations with Germany - although negotiating with Hitler turned out to be quite crazy.  Because Hitler's true goal was as binary as the Ayatollahs.  But the Obami can't pretend to be aging Tory cowards traumatized by the Great War to get our sympathy because we know what the turban topped, man-dress minions are up to.

And that means that the fake negotiation gambit is extremely damaging to US and world interests because this situation is so damn asymmetric.  Asymmetry is the extent to which two sides of a coin, a human or a negotiation are not identical or the mirror image of each other. A symmetric negotiation would be two countries dickering over a patch of land and crazed villagers between them where the two sides are similar in power and both want the land and not the crazed villagers.  In that situation neither side can overpower the other, there are lots of intermediate solutions and variables that can be traded and whatever outcome ensues will dissatisfy the most ardent proponents on both sides mostly because everyone hates crazed villagers.  Even binary negotiations can be symmetric if the outcomes of losing are similar to both sides, for example, if you and I bet on a coin flip and we each stand to gain or lose a dollar then the game is 'symmetric'.

Our little tête-à-tête with the Irano-fascists is anything but symmetric.  In fact it's more like a coin flip game where if the Ayatollahs lose they pay a dollar and if we lose we pay a trillion. This is because of who we are and because the Iranian positive outcome is a disaster for us while a win for us merely sustains the unpleasant status quo.

Failing to deter Iran is a big deal because we are The Hegemon - the "It" country, the "Polity with the Plan" so to speak who is not only representing our interests but is also speaking for our regional allies and indeed the world which would really, really prefer that people with an unnatural obsession for sex with large numbers of heaven sourced virgins not have nuclear weapons.  If we fail and the Iranians get the bomb we have failed as the world's hyperpuissance - punked by pusillanimous pip-squeak Persians.  We fail not only ourselves but betray the trust of our regional allies and damage our credibility at a time when (of course) the Iranians will be launching a number of creative new and very violent initiatives to take advantage of their new toys.  

And that's the other asymmetry:  if the Iranians lose the binary bet, big deal - they're still crazed mullahs in mullets and man dresses  - they've been that ever since the Arabs killed all of the hip Zoroastrian gurus 1300 years ago.  But if we lose the bet, then the doe eyed virgin horn dogs will have nukes - and a governing philosophy that is rather non-materialist to say the least.  Say what you will about the commies but they believed that this life was it and therefore at the existential, nuclear level they behaved like boy scouts - murderous, criminal boy scouts no doubt, but scouts all the same.  But the whole point of the Iranian theocracy is transcendent:  it is to usher in heaven on earth and if that doesn't work then send everyone to heaven (or hell depending on denomination and personal habits) where it sure as hell will.  We let them play nuclear nookie and our allies will have no choice but to go to Pakistan who have a few score hand made vapor makers. The Pakistanis (or rather a few well placed freelancers within their intelligence service) will respond to this sincere expression of consumer interest in their best bazaar Bob Barker:  "Sheikh Yourmani come on down, you have just won the right to have your very own thermonuclear warhead suitable for vaporizing Shia apostates and impressing all the the other tinpot dictators and generalissimos.  Women will swoon over your strong, radioactive aura.  All for the low low price of a few billion dollars in the First Infernal Bank of Dubai account of Mr. REDACTED."

Which is why our allies in the region are beside themselves with rage and frustration.  They cannot understand how a country could blow trillions of dollars - getting down to the level of fixing Tikrit toilets -  and then toss it all in the crapper along with much, much more besides just because we're scared of killing a few thousand Persian pencilnecks in their underground Jihadi lairs.

In my very humble opinion the asymmetric outcome is likely to be so extreme, so disastrous to us and the world at large that there is no action we can take up to and including conquering Iran and killing every pro nuke cleric and boffin we can find that would be as bad as letting the current Iranian regime get its retractable claws on nuclear weapons.  And I'm a guy who doesn't want us to get in the middle of the Islamocrazies' various Jihads and feuds.

I say this because I can foresee two different negative outcomes arising out of our leaders' exaggerated delicacy:  Outcome one with a 99% chance of happening is that the Iranians, emboldened by their nuclear deterrent try to take control of Shia Iraq and foment a revolution in the Shia strongholds of eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Further afield, Iran aggressively promotes revolutions in Syria and Lebanon while at home they attempt to occupy the former Persian province of Azerbaijan.  If they succeed they control the lion's share of middle east oil and can blackmail the world and fund Jihad to their black hearts' content.  The Arabs will fight like hell to stop this and get their own nukes.  And in the end either the Iranians or some coalition of benuked Arabs will win.  But in the meantime total war destroys a lot of the world's oil production and the world falls into a deep (but low carbon!) recession. The US and Israel avoid getting directly involved because they realize that as soon as they do their citizens will be exposed to nuclear terror. So they say 'sorry boys, good luck and all that, don't you know' or its Hebrew equivalent while keeping their deadly cohorts on the sideline.



That's the 99% probability solution - the good outcome, the best we can probably hope for and it will play out with many twists and turns over time. The 1% probability outcome is some mixture of all of the above and a nuclear detonation in a major international city either in the region or somewhere else.  The moment that happens the world's borders close.  Trade collapses, economies collapse, governments collapse.  Old rivalries become acute and countries that have been held together primarily by high commodity prices like Russia or massive exports like China fall into chaos. Their huge and heavily armed forces go freelance and their nukes go walkabout.

So if the Iran Ian get nukes there is a strong probability of a many trillion dollar disaster that could seriously hurt the world economy and then there's the bad outcome which is a hundred trillion dollar tens of millions of lives catastrophe.

Either way we will regret allowing the Iranians nukes for a very long time.