One of the most important foreign policy issues of the Middle East concerns the possible existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Given the drumbeat of statements from Iranian officials like President Ahmadinejad threatening to destroy Israel, the Israelis have every right to be concerned.
Israel might try to use military means to remove the Iranian nuclear weapons capability, triggering certain retaliation by Iran. Thus, logic demands that the Israelis act preemptively, before Iran could respond with an atomic weapon. Educated opinion predicts that such an attack would take the form of airstrikes on critical nuclear installations.
Can the Israelis mount such an attack? Would it be successful? How could the Iranians retaliate? What would the political effects be, not only on the belligerents, but on their supporters and the rest of the world?
I first suggested the idea of a game exploring the Israel-Iran issue in the summer of 2009 to my publisher at Clash of Arms, Ed Wimble. Ed was enthusiastic about the idea, as was my coauthor, Chris Carlson. We added a third designer, Jeff Dougherty, to the team, because we believed his expertise would help in modeling the political issues in the game. All three of us agreed completely on the basic concept.
Persian Incursion (2010) would not consider whether Israel should attack, or under what conditions they might decide it was necessary. The starting premise was that the Israeli leadership had already made the decision and had ordered the IAF to execute an air campaign against Iran.
Our goal was not to find out whether such a strike was justified. The game limited its scope to exploring the complex question of how such an attack might be carried out and its military and political effects, and that was quite enough to take on.
Although we use the term “game,” it was not play-balanced so that each side had an equal chance of winning. Instead, we wanted a tool that allowed the players to “bang the rocks together” and find out what happens. We did not expect the simulation to show whether an attack would succeed or fail. It was hoped, through repeated plays, to discover any dominant factors in the conflict. Since the Israeli and Iranian leaderships were asking the same questions in the real world, presumably those factors were foremost in their thinking about the issue.
Development began in 2008 and continued until publication in the summer of 2010. It was designed as a standard two-sided game, and while the format began as a miniatures supplement, it morphed several times until it became a board game using both counters and cards.
We envisioned an Israeli campaign to destroy the Iranian nuclear program as operating on two levels simultaneously: military and political. While any military campaign would be relatively short, it would not be a single strike like the Israeli raid on Iraq in 1981 or Syria in 2007. The target set was just too large.
Even if the first airstrike was a resounding success, within twenty-four hours Iran’s leadership would call out to the world community for support and sanctions against the Israelis. Some countries would be more than willing to offer the Iranians different levels of support. Even the United Nations (UN), which has criticized the Iranians for their lack of compliance with nuclear safeguards, would have to acknowledge that in this case, the Israelis were the aggressors. We decided that in addition to the two players, the other countries that could influence the conflict and the UN would be represented as nonplayer actors.
We could model the airstrikes and the defenses using Harpoon, a modern tactical wargame Chris Carlson and I created, first published in 1981 and now in its fourth edition. Designed to be played manually with naval miniatures or counters, each player takes on the role of a formation commander controlling the actions of surface ships, aircraft, and submarines.
While the first edition covered hypothetical North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact conflicts, the Falklands War, which happened shortly after the first edition was published, showed that the game could be adapted to cover modern naval combat in any part of the world. Published supplements now cover not only the Falklands, but hypothetical actions in the Pacific, as well as Cold War scenarios. At the time development on Persian Incursion began, the Harpoon systems annexes included data on over one thousand different ship and sub classes, hundreds of aircraft types, and all their associated sensors and weapons. Mature and full-featured, Harpoon had the data and rules needed to create scenarios simulating Israeli airstrikes on different targets in Iran, as well as other military actions by both sides that might be part of the conflict.
The political modeling would be addressed using a card game. For this purpose, we recruited Jeff Dougherty, an experienced designer who had created other card-based wargames. (Jeff also made many contributions to other parts of the game; it is fair to say that the three designers each created 60 percent of the final product.)
So that the players could take political as well as military actions, we created a card deck with actions and events drawn from many other conflicts. These could be actions taken by the player, such as an appeal to the UN, or an espionage operation, or they could be random events like a scandal. The cards were drawn and laid out in a moving “river” that constantly changed from one turn to the next, modeling both the randomness and ephemeral nature of a political opportunity. Each turn the players could spend accumulated points to use one or more of the cards. The results of the cards were also points that could be used to influence the countries that were involved in the game, or the players’ own populations.
Our first challenge was to integrate these two different formats. It was understood that the military strikes could not decide the issue alone. The outcome would have to be decided in the political arena. That meant the results of the airstrikes had to be transferred to the political arena.
We had already decided that support from the other countries to the two belligerents would be modeled using military, intelligence, and political points. These represented resources either accumulated by the two players or provided by other countries to the players. The points could be used by the players to take different actions in the game. The number and type of points given to Israel and Iran would vary depending on each country’s level of support. The airstrikes would also generate political points for the players.
As we gathered information and began the mission planning for the Israeli airstrikes, geography showed us how closely tied together the political and military aspects of the game would be.
Israel has no common border with Iran, so the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would have to overfly either Turkey, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach its target—or more properly, targets. The overflight would not be a solitary event. Postulating a one-week campaign, not only would combat planes be flying the route every day, but aerial tankers and possibly combat search and rescue missions to recover downed pilots would also be using the same airspace. And what about damaged Israeli aircraft? Could they divert to fields along their flight path if they couldn’t make it all the way back to their home base?
Israel would have to essentially rent an air corridor for at least a week over one of these three Muslim countries or the campaign wouldn’t happen. That had to be included in the game’s setup.
We modeled the different nonplayer countries (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Russia, China, and the United States, along with the United Nations) using “attitude tracks” that showed their level of affiliation/support for one side or the other. These were all the countries that could directly affect the conflict by supporting or restraining the players’ cause. At the start of the game, each county would have a value, expressed as a number between 10 (for Israel) and –10 (for Iran). The “attitude values” for each country would be provided in sets, reflecting different political scenarios. These sets would include Israel coming to an accommodation with each of the three countries, as well as other political situations. The players could also create their own mutually agreed-on starting set.
Another big issue was the uncertainty of much of the information we found. While a surprising amount of material about orders of battle and capabilities was available, rumored arms sales were mixed with propaganda and speculation. Had the Iranians purchased modern Pantsir SAM systems from the Russians through Syria? That would represent a significant increase in Iranian short-range air defenses. We knew which mark of GBU precision-guided bomb the Israelis had purchased from the United States—the GBU-28B—but what if they also secretly bought the newer GBU-28C, in anticipation of the campaign? Having greater penetrating power, it would halve the number of bombs that would have to be dropped to destroy the underground enrichment halls at Natanz. The Israelis have done that type of thing in the past.
Writing fiction (Red Phoenix, Dangerous Ground, Shattered Trident, etc.) has taught me a few tricks that authors like to use. If your plot has a problem with no clear answer, write it into the story. Instead of trying to decide which rumors were true, we gave the players points at the start of the game that could be spent on different upgrades to their forces. Some were real-world rumors of weapons sales; others were actions each side might reasonably take in anticipation of a conflict.
Allowing for a variable setup in both the political and military aspects not only resolved the problem of uncertain information, but it also kept the game from being dated too quickly. Obviously the political situation would change, probably as soon as the game went to press. Players could create their own sets of political attitudes for each country; they could also add new “upgrades” as new rumors appeared or existing ones were confirmed or debunked.
It would also further the exploratory purpose of the game, as players tested different combinations of political and military situations. By using different political and military setups, they could determine which factors dominated the conflict in many or even most cases.
Initially, we considered every possible action that each side might take, and made sure that the game included the rules the players would need to perform them. As we worked with the design, we discovered several actions that did not need to be included and removed them from the game.
For example, the principal Iranian military threat to Israel comes from Iran’s ballistic missiles. The Iranians have a large number and are experienced in their use from the Iran-Iraq war. Israeli aircraft could try to destroy these missiles and their launchers. This would remove them as potential carriers of a nuclear weapon or, if Iran started using conventionally armed missiles during the air campaign, reduce the number of missiles reaching Israeli targets.
In addition to researching the Iranian missile order of battle, we looked at Coalition “Scud hunting” results during the first Gulf War. The results were not encouraging: only forty-one of the many launches were actually spotted, and of those, only eight (20 percent) were converted into a kill—and this was after the missile had been launched. While Iran doesn’t have an infinite number of transporter-erector-launchers, killing them one at a time after a launch was not attractive. The coalition also had many advantages Israel would not; Israel would be working at arm’s length, without the advantage of overhead E-3 and JSTARS radar surveillance.
Striking the missile magazines was out of the question. Each of the missile brigades had more than a hundred hardened shelters for their weapons. Even with perfect weapon performance, it would take several squadrons just to make a dent in one storage area. Better to destroy the ability, and desire, to make a nuclear bomb.
Other player options we considered and discarded included Iranian ballistic missiles with “dirty” or CBW warheads, Israeli ballistic missiles armed with conventional instead of nuclear warheads, and a long-range one-way Iranian retaliatory airstrike against an Israeli city. Dirty bombs would not have the destructive effects of a nuclear weapon but would have risked Israeli nuclear retaliation. Israeli ballistic missiles with conventional warheads didn’t have enough destructive capability to effectively destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, and the Iranian one-way airstrike was not only judged unlikely, but it also would be annihilated long before it reached any target in Israeli territory. It would be seen as a political loss for Iran, a demonstration of its military ineffectiveness.
While we allowed the Iranians to attempt to “close the straits of Hormuz,” as they have threatened to do, we abstracted the process, concentrating not on the means or military results but on the political effects, which was after all, Iran’s goal. Simulating the actual closing of the straits with missiles or air attacks would require a game of its own, with no connection to the air campaign, and its effect on the political situation could be described simply as either resulting in international pressure on Israel to stop its air campaign (the Iranian goal), or international backlash against Iran for its attacks on merchant ships (which is what happened the last time they tried it in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war). It might even pull the United States and other countries into the war on the Israeli side.
We also added more variability to the game by giving the Israeli player an additional strategic option, striking Iran’s oil industry. In spite of strenuous efforts to diversify its economy, Iran’s primary source of foreign income is oil. Its arms, purchased from China, North Korea, and Russia, are paid for with oil or oil money. Iran also has a modern industrial society that depends on oil to run. And it is vulnerable. Iran has still not repaired all the damage its oil industry suffered during the Iran-Iraq war. With foreign technical assistance gone after the 1979 revolution, Iran has had to learn new skills or buy them abroad. Although an oil producer and exporter, Iran still has to import refined products.
We added refineries and oil terminals to the target set, along with their defenses, which were much weaker than those around the nuclear facilities. We developed simple criteria for determining if the Iranian economy had reached the breaking point, at which point they would sue for peace.
After many discussions, we also arrived at the all-important victory conditions for an air campaign against the nuclear facilities. After all, if the Israelis level the Natanz enrichment facility or the Arak heavy water reactor, or anything else, the Iranians can just rebuild. It may even be easier to build and better than before because they now have the experience and expertise from constructing the first one.
What the Israelis must do is convince Iran’s leaders that they will never be able to finish the bomb. Iran has gone to amazing lengths to construct a nuclear weapon, suffering international sanctions that are adversely affecting its economy, and spending precious money and talent that could have been used, for instance, to recapitalize its still-crippled oil industry.
Our analysis and common wisdom, confirmed by early playtests, showed that the IAF could destroy any part of the nuclear infrastructure and that the Iranian air defense system could at best hope to knock down a couple of aircraft, if its operators were smart and lucky. But that might be enough.
In an air campaign against Iran, expectations would set the bar for the Israelis very high. Of course, they could blow up any part of Iran they could reach. The question was, what price would they pay in lost aircraft and pilots? In our game, those losses were translated into political points for the Iranians. If the price was too high, Israel could flatten every nuclear facility in Iran and still be the loser.
In short, Israel not only had to win, but win big, and win easily. They had to demonstrate that they could not only destroy any installation that Iran built, but that they could come back and do it again, any time they wanted, and Iran couldn’t do a thing to stop them.
The precision-guided bombs on Israeli aircraft were really aimed at the minds of the Iranian Supreme Leader and the rest of the leadership. After spending all that time and talent, they had to look at the smoking craters and say, “There’s no future in this.” That doesn’t mean that the Iranians will change their attitude—just that they won’t try to build a nuclear weapon, which is the narrowly defined goal of the Israeli campaign.
Unless the Iranians came to that conclusion, unless they were convinced that the time and treasure invested on developing a nuclear weapon was a complete waste, the Israeli air campaign would fail. In contrast to the Israeli necessity to win big, all the Iranians had to do was not lose.
Persian Incursion was published in the summer of 2010 and consisted of a box containing a forty-seven-page rules booklet, a forty-three-page briefing booklet, a thirty-seven-page booklet called “Target Folders,” a 22″ × 17″ map, two decks of fifty-five political cards each for the two players, cardboard counters, aircraft data cards, and dice. In addition, we produced a sample rules booklet as a PDF available for free download.
The game was well received both by the gaming and the professional community. It was reviewed by the magazine Foreign Policy, and more recently The Economist. The response from people in the professional “pol-mil” community was mixed. They liked the game and were interested in playing, but they often had no background in air warfare. They understood that allocating resources (aircraft) to different targets was important, but some wanted the resolution of the attacks abstracted even more than the simplified combat and damage rules we had adapted from Harpoon.
To support these requests, we created two different products. The Quickstrike rules allowed players to run the air missions as before, but they resolved the actual weapon drops more quickly. A set of even more simplified strike rules appeared later, designed for people who found the airstrike planning process too daunting or time-consuming.
The military community saw the game primarily as a training tool. For example, Persian Incursion was tested by the Army War College as a vehicle for teaching the staff planning process. They concentrated on the military part of the game, with the players responsible for organizing and executing airstrikes, like a real-world air staff. We produced an expanded damage form and a summary of Iranian SAM sites to support the military community’s interest. All of these supplements are available for free download at the Admiralty Trilogy Group website.
All three designers have been gratified by the reception the game has received. It not only serves as a validation of our work, but it also encourages us to continue to support and update the game. The April 2014 issue of The Naval SITREP includes an article by Jeff Dougherty updating the game, and we intend to produce a second edition of Persian Incursion that will not only include the most current data but will also address the interests of the different professional communities.
It also encourages us to look for other places or situations where this political-military hybrid model could be applied. Political factors have always been a part of, and the most important part of, warfare, but in this age of high-speed and high-density communications, the political factors appear when the war starts, not just at the truce table.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in quantitative methods, Larry Bond worked as a computer programmer for two years before being selected for Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He served as a surface warfare officer in the US Navy until 1982, then worked as a naval analyst for defense consulting firms. He coauthored Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy and has teamed with several different authors to write eighteen novels: five with Pat Larkin, starting with Red Phoenix; eight with Jim deFelice, The First Team and Red Dragon Rising series; six with Chris Carlson, including the Jerry Mitchell series; and his latest book, Lash-Up. Five of these have been New York Times bestsellers. He has also codesigned the Admiralty Trilogy series games, which include Harpoon, Command at Sea, and Fear God & Dread Nought. All three have won industry awards. He now writes and designs games full-time. His website is <www.larry-bond.com>.