Bush, Ahmadinejad, and “Cheat” (the card game)

I don’t normally make political posts, and to be honest this one isn’t political either. I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of who should be allowed nuclear weapons, nor the honesty or dishonesty of either player – this post is purely looking at the game strategies of the two players, Iran and the US, assuming they are the sort of abstract game players you see in mathematics papers. But the conclusion is that Iran almost certainly is developing a nuclear weapon, and the US almost certainly should take action.

In the card game Cheat, players play cards face-down and claim what they are. When someone plays their cards, anyone can call “cheat” and look at them. If the player was cheating, they have to pick up the stack; if the player was not cheating, the caller has to pick up the stack. With Iraq, Saddam Hussein claimed not to have WMDs, Bush called “cheat”, and picked up the lost lives and political fallout of an expensive unnecessary war when no WMDs were found. Ahmadinejad is well aware that the US, with its hands full of Iraq’s troubles from its last call, would find it very hard to call “cheat” again and risk getting another handful of unnecessary lives lost, expense, and international embarrassment. Of course that’s also exactly what makes it more likely for Ahmadinejad to cheat…

I can honestly say that before the Iraq war I predicted Iraq did not have any WMDs (I posted it briefly as a rant on my website, before taking it down not wanting to make any political statements at the time – it’s maybe still on archive.org), and I can reasonably predict that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. The reason isn’t any special intelligence, but just having a frank look at the “game situation” for the parties involved.

As I originally posted: In the 1990s Saddam Hussein certainly did have chemical weapons, but “strategy” suggests he’d have got rid of them by late 2002. For Saddam, in the 1990s, chemical weapons made sense as a strong weapon he could use against rebels within Iraq. But as soon as the US started threatening war over WMDs, it would have been very bad strategy to keep them – gas is not an effective weapon against a stealth bomber 3 miles in the sky, nor against the worlds best equipped army who he’d expect to have plenty of gas masks. Suddenly that well-equipped enemy was the biggest threat to his power, not the ill-equipped rebels, and the WMDs had become a risk and not a benefit. So what could he do? He couldn’t admit to having chemical weapons to the inspectors, or Bush could immediately shout “see, he’s had WMDs all this time, let’s invade!”. And he couldn’t risk the inspectors finding them either. So presumably the only strategy he had left was to quietly get rid of them and then pretend he hadn’t had any chemical weapons for ages, hoping the Americans would be persuaded to give up when the inspectors didn’t find anything. Become “innocent” quickly, and pretend he was innocent all along. And I reckon that’s probably what happened.

Ahmedinejad is in a different position. His public image and his popular support in Iran comes from him resolutely defying America. Also, he’s in a position where he possibly could get a nuke and become untouchable by the US, who have never gone to war with enemies they think are nuclear-armed (as opposed to chemically-armed) and maybe never could. If Ahmadinejad gives in and abandons the bomb, he risks being seen as weak in his own country, and potentially losing power. If he presses on, he just might get the security of that weapon and (hypothetically in his mind) be able to change the politics of the Middle East forever.

So just looking at the strategies and game situation, Ahmadinejad looks like he’ll cheat, and Bush needs to have the courage to call him on it despite having got the last “cheat” call so wrong. But with only two years left in office, and Republicans becoming less and less liked in America because of that previous call, I’m worried Bush might feel unable to call “cheat” again. And that’d be the beginner’s mistake in the card game (suckered into calling when you shouldn’t, and then immediately suckered into not calling when you should).

Strategically the worst thing to do would be for the US or Britain to make any public statement ruling out military action. Tell a Cheat player you'll definitely not call "cheat" on their next play, and you've just given them carte blanche to put their whole hand down while claiming it's just a pair of threes.