This Week at War: Rules of the Game
Foreign Policy
By Robert Haddock
March 23, 2012
What message were U.S. officials trying to send by releasing the results of a CentCom Iran war game?
On March 19, the New York Times described a classified U.S. Central Command war game conducted this month that simulated the outcome of an Israeli attack on Iran. According to U.S. officials who discussed the results with the newspaper, the game “forecasts that the [Israeli] strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.” Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of Central Command, found the outcome “particularly troubling” because an Israeli first strike would have “dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.”
The article, with its discussion of “dire consequences,” is one more indication of the gap between the Israeli government’s calculations concerning Iran and those of the U.S. government. Why that analytical gap exists should be of interest to policymakers. The military’s conclusion that U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region could suffer hundreds of deaths following an Israeli strike could be an indication that U.S. commanders and policymakers have not adequately prepared for such a scenario. But perhaps most important, we should examine what goals U.S. officials had in mind when they leaked the results of the supposedly secret war game to the New York Times.
According to the article, the two-week Central Command war game, called Internal Look, was specifically designed to test internal military communications and coordination among battle staffs in the Pentagon, Central Command headquarters in Tampa, and field units in the Persian Gulf. According to the scenario, Iran would conclude that the United States was an Israeli partner and therefore U.S. military forces in the Gulf were complicit in the Israeli first strike. The simulation had Iranian anti-ship missiles strike a U.S. warship killing hundreds of sailors. The United States then retaliated with its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
This simulation appears to differ sharply from Israeli expectations. …
Read on: www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/23/this_week_at_war_rules_of_the_game
