http://www.dailyalert.org/archive/2009-1...12-07.html Wrote:Who Loses the Iran Game? - David Ignatius (Washington Post)

• How will the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program evolve during the next year? If a simulation game played at Harvard last week is any guide, Iran will be closer to having the bomb, and America will fail to obtain tough UN sanctions; diplomatic relations with Russia, China and Europe will be strained; and Israel will be threatening unilateral military action.
• The simulation was organized by Graham Allison, the head of the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. It was animated by the key players: Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, as President Obama; and Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, as Prime Minister Netanyahu.
• When America asked for assurances that Israel wouldn't attack Iran without U.S. permission, the Israeli prime minister, as played by Gold, refused to make that pledge, insisting that Israel alone must decide how to protect its security. Whereupon Burns' president warned that if Israel did strike, contrary to U.S. interests, Washington might publicly denounce the attack.
• Gold said the game clarified for him a worrying difference of opinion between U.S. and Israeli leaders: "The U.S. is moving away from preventing a nuclear Iran to containing a nuclear Iran - with deterrence based on the Cold War experience. That became clear in the simulation. Israel, in contrast, still believes a nuclear Iran must be prevented."
  

See also How the "Iran Team" Leader Viewed the Harvard Simulation - Laura Rozen (Politico)
Columbia University professor Gary Sick, a veteran National Security Council Iran hand, was the leader of the Iranian team in the Harvard simulation. His account:

• The U.S. team went to work with a vengeance to get a consensus on sanctions. This didn't bother the Iran team in the least. We didn't think they could put together a package that would hurt us in any serious way, and that proved to be true. But more important, in the process they managed to offend all of their ostensible allies and wasted so much time and effort that Iran was better off at the end than they had been at the beginning. Since this represents a version of actual U.S. strategy over three administrations, I think there is a lesson there that is ignored at our peril.
• As far as I could tell, the pursuit of sanctions was essentially an end in itself. But does it stop Iran? To be honest, the Iran team scarcely paid any attention to all this massive policy exertion. We never felt that our core objectives (freedom to proceed with our nuclear plans and our growing appetite for domestic political repression) were at risk, much less the survival of our regime. We largely ignored the ineffective pressure tactics originating from the U.S.
• Why was there no push to test Iran on safeguards, inspections, or other techniques that might assure the world of reliable and on-going intelligence about what Iran is doing (early warning); or restricting certain key elements of Iran's nuclear program that would lengthen the time required to actually break out into production of a nuclear device? Nobody tried.
• This game provided an opportunity for me to test my understanding of the dynamics propelling each side in the Iran debate. And the result, I am sorry to say, was even more depressing than I would have imagined. The lesson was not so much that Iran could "win" this game so easily; it was that the U.S. and its allies were unable even to imagine any alternatives.

Oh, it's ok. This guy figured it all out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts5MKtXNpMQ

He used computers, so he must be right.

Quote:Columbia University professor Gary Sick, a veteran National Security Council Iran hand, was the leader of the Iranian team in the Harvard simulation. His account:

I'm laughing so hard I just spit on my monitor. Gary Sick is a certified idiot

He was on Carter's NSC staff and was the originator of the "George Bush flew on a SR-71 to meet the Iranians in 1980 rumor"

Harvard letting this Bozo wargame the Iranian leadership? Give me a break.

You want their "grand strategy" ..? Just look for all the "Hidden Imam" garbage broadcast daily on IRIB. They want to provoke a war.

(12-07-2009 11:09 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

Quote:Columbia University professor Gary Sick, a veteran National Security Council Iran hand, was the leader of the Iranian team in the Harvard simulation. His account:

I'm laughing so hard I just spit on my monitor. Gary Sick is a certified idiot

He was on Carter's NSC staff and was the originator of the "George Bush flew on a SR-71 to meet the Iranians in 1980 rumor"

Harvard letting this Bozo wargame the Iranian leadership? Give me a break.

You want their "grand strategy" ..? Just look for all the "Hidden Imam" garbage broadcast daily on IRIB. They want to provoke a war.

It's not that role that is the most interesting out of this scenario. Dore Gold stood in for Netanyahu. Even that role is pretty predictable. The problem is that no one could make the US look like anything but a dying power. And, I'd expect any certified idiot that doesn't have to run for re-election to out-perform the current administration. But, they couldn't even do that and come out looking ok.

While we have our head buried in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rest of the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. Our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have strengthened and emboldened Iran. Africa is becoming a Chinese economic satellite, and South America is next. Russia is coming alive again as a international player.

We get drawn into these long quagmire engagements because we lack the will to do what needs to be done in the first place. They know we are weak, and they will take advantage. We should have gone into Afghanistan, killed Mullah Omar, killed bin Ladin, killed every other al Qaeda operative we could find, destroyed everything we could find of al Qaeda's infrastructure, and left. Whatever it took to get that done is what we should have done. We should have had no other objectives.