Striking Iran: Two Games and a World – Pt 1

Here’s how Clash of Arms, the publisher, describes the game packet:

Persian Incursion provides comprehensive and detailed information on:

• Orders of battle for the Israeli and Iranian Air Forces and the Iranian Air Defense Force

• Analysis of the Iranian nuclear and oil infrastructure

• Iranian ballistic missiles and Israeli ballistic missile defenses

• Target folders for Iranian nuclear facilities, oil terminals and refineries, and airfields

• Variable starting conditions

Components:

• Rulebook; Briefing Package and Target folders;

• 17 x 22″ Full color map;

• Short Deck of “Super Cards” (4.25 x 6″);

• 2 Full decks of playing cards (110 cards);

• Cardboard counters;

• Box and dice.

Now I am absolutely not the guy you want to ask about the game-play, or about the game’s possible implications for policy analysis. Michael Peck may well be that guy, but even he doesn’t leave the game with a clear sense of how things might play out in real time:

The real question of this exercise, however, is whether an Israeli strike on Iran is a good or bad idea. Persian Incursion’s answer is an unqualified “maybe.” Israel can’t stop Iran from retaliating with missile attacks and terrorism. But it also can’t guarantee complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. Perhaps most importantly, the key to victory is winning the public-opinion, political war.

And when you get granular, “public opinion” turns out to mean the interwoven opinions of many, many and diverse people — some influential, some easily influenced, some whose world-view features a rigorous scientism, some a potentially wrathful deity – all of whom are themselves beset by a myriad of doubts, certainties, hopes, fears, bouts of toothache and who knows what else…

Modeling even one of those minds (and associated hearts) would be quite a trick…

So. That’s the “reference library” approach, to use Peck’s term:

Persian Incursion isn’t a novel — it’s a reference library inside a game. The background information included is staggering. Besides the rules book, there is a target folder and a briefing booklet listing the precise dimensions of Iranian nuclear facilities down to the meter…

The gamer has what we’ll assume is a highly accurate representation of the materiel side of things. Morale, at the granular level of a Netanyahu or a Khamenei?

Who can game the workings of a single human mind (and heart)?

[continued in Pt 2]

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