US-Iran Nuclear Deal motivations: Game Theory
The article delineated the sentiments of Iran and the United States a year after the 2015 US-Iran Nuclear Deal, where Iran complied with the terms stated and put 19,000 centrifuges in storage and under international scrutiny, shipped out 98 percent of its low-enriched uranium and opened up nuclear facilities to international inspectors. Iran is unhappy—it argues that it had not received the economic benefits it expected after the lifting of economic sanctions. The United States and its allies are unhappy too, as Iran has continued to carry out ballistic missile tests and continues to support President Bashar Assad in Syria, the Lebanese group Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq. Furthermore, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed the sentiments that Iran could regain its nuclear achievements if the U.S. and others breach their side of the deal with more sanctions.
I find the US-Iran Nuclear Deal very interesting, for we can use game theory to understand more clearly the policy actions of US and Iran. In 2012 where tension between the US and Iran ran high following the stuxnet attack on the uranium enrichment facilities, the strategies between the US and Iran probably looked like this (in my opinion):
In class, we only look at a player’s own payoff and not that of other players’ to determine if the strategy is a best response. However, in politics, players benefit more when the other player gets a lower payoff (Iran gets a higher payoff in domestic politics and leaders get higher approval ratings when it makes the US unhappy). This makes the game a lot more confrontational than the typical Prisoner’s Dilemma kind of problem, and more like a chicken game where players pit against one another. From this table, we would think that Iran would be inclined to continue its nuclear program (unless a deal is offered), while the United States would want to step up hostility (second best action would be to offer a deal). That is what went on for decades before the deal was made.
This is highly relevant to our course’s lecture on game theory, where we look into players’ playoff to explain why a player chooses a strategy. Yet with politics, with the tides always changing, the payoff matrix would always be changing too. A best response for a certain moment may no longer be it in the next month, hence we would have to continuously update it. The dynamics of the relationship of the two countries makes it even more complex too, for we have to decide if it’s more of a chicken game or a Prisoner Dilemma kind of game, or one with characteristics of both.