Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
The Israel-Iran War is a more tangled, and fragile, web that this. Photo ©2025, Richard Careaga, all rights reserved. Text ©2025 Richard Careaga all rights reserved, except as to content below the divider, which is not a work of authorship due to its machine origin.
I’ve been noodling the possibility that Iran might, if pressed, resort to deploying some of its stock of uranium that while not enriched to weapons grade could still be used to produce one or more dirty bombs. If it did so, would Israel retaliate by nuking Tehran? Does the Ayatollah take the doctrine of martyrdom seriously enough to think that might be an acceptable price for driving out the infidel even if doing so also kills Muslims and making the land, including one of Islam’s holiest shrines, uninhabitable and unvisitable for a lifetime or more?
So, as increasingly I do, I turned to Claude for advice and received the analysis below. There is a cognitive bias to find coherent narratives such as it provided as credible. I do find its argument convincing that the situation creates an unstable equilibrium in which deterrence provides no assurances. The war over the Holy Land in its post WWII phase has been unstable and the uneasy peace has been destroyed many times, most recently by the campaign against Gaza. But both “sides” are still standing. Whether that can continue indefinitely is the great unknown.
Again, what follows is not my writing, although I have lightly edited it and find it convincing, but I do take credit for the prompt.
The Nuclear Triangle: A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Multi-State Deterrence Breakdown
How religious extremism and asymmetric capabilities create unstable equilibria in regional nuclear crises
The contemporary security environment presents a complex three-player game involving Nations A, B, and C, where traditional deterrence theory faces severe challenges from religious motivations, asymmetric capabilities, and shifting great power dynamics. Nation A, wielding aerial supremacy over Nation B, justifies its dominance by citing concerns over Nation B's uranium enrichment program—currently at 60% but requiring 90% for weaponization. Nation C, a declared nuclear superpower, has already conducted conventional strikes against Nation B's facilities at Nation A's behest, despite domestic opposition to further regional entanglements following one partially and one totally unsuccessful military interventions in the region. One of those intervention was justified on similar grounds of weapons of mass destruction that eventuated to be unfounded.
The strategic landscape is further complicated by Nation B's loose alliances with Nations D and E—both rivals of Nation C, though the latter has recently cultivated improved relations with Nation D. Nation A's political stability depends precariously on a minority coalition of religious nationalists seeking to expel non-believers, while Nation B operates as a theocracy with strong internal security but faces potential civil unrest among its population, which outnumbers Nation A's by ten to one.
The Nuclear Dimension and Asymmetric Capabilities
The introduction of nuclear considerations fundamentally alters the strategic calculus. While Nations A and C possess the capability to conduct nuclear strikes against Nation B's capital, Nation B's options remain asymmetric: deploying dirty bombs against Nation A through either aerial delivery or ground-based smuggling operations. This asymmetry creates what Thomas Schelling would recognize as a “competition in risk-taking,” where the side with more to lose may paradoxically hold strategic advantages.¹
Nation B's desired nuclear bomb capability represents what Barry Posen terms “the security dilemma” in its most acute form—defensive preparations that appear offensive to adversaries.² The intercepted missile scenario, where a dirty bomb payload can be effectively deployed regardless of interception success, exemplifies what Herman Kahn described as “doomsday machines”—weapons systems designed to function even after command and control breakdown.³
Religious Constraints and Sacred Geography
The religious dimension introduces what I [Claude] term “sacred deterrence”—constraints based on spiritual rather than material calculations. Nation A's capital houses a shrine holy to Nation B's faith, creating a divine impediment to certain targeting strategies. This religious constraint operates as what Robert Jervis calls a "self-imposed restriction" that can paradoxically enhance credibility by removing certain options from consideration.⁴
Nation B's religious doctrine celebrating martyrdom fundamentally challenges classical deterrence theory, which assumes rational actors seeking survival. As Keith Payne argues, deterrence fails when adversaries embrace “acceptable losses” that exceed the threatener's capabilities.⁵ The presence of operatives willing to undertake suicide missions transforms Nation B's limited conventional capabilities into credible asymmetric threats.
Game-Theoretic Analysis: Multiple Equilibria and Instability
In game theoretic analysis, a situation has a Nash equilibrium where no player can unilaterally improve their position without making one or more other players worse off. Under these revised conditions, any previous Nash equilibrium becomes unstable. Three potential equilibria emerge:
Equilibrium 1: Continued Crisis Stability requires Nation B to maintain enrichment below the 90% threshold while Nation A refrains from preventive strikes, and Nation C provides limited support without escalation. However, this equilibrium depends on Nation B's voluntary restraint despite possessing dirty bomb capabilities and suicide operatives—a potentially unlikely assumption given their religious motivations.
Equilibrium 2: Escalation Dominance involves Nation A conducting preventive nuclear strikes before Nation B achieves weaponization. This strategy, reminiscent of what Scott Sagan calls "preventive war logic," assumes that early action prevents worse outcomes later.⁶ However, the religious constraints regarding Nation A's capital create targeting limitations that may preserve Nation B's retaliatory capabilities if it determines it can deploy a dirty bomb in Nation A that does not affect the capital.
Equilibrium 3: Mutual Devastation represents the breakdown of deterrence, where Nation B deploys dirty bombs regardless of retaliation threats. Glenn Snyder's analysis of “stability-instability paradox” applies here: the reluctance to credibly threaten Nation A's sacred sites may encourage adventurism at lower levels of conflict.⁷
The Great Power Triangle
Nation C's position is complicated by its relationships with Nations D and E. Following Stephen Walt's "balance of threat" theory, Nation C must weigh its commitment to containing Nation B against potential costs in its rivalry with Nations D and E.⁸ If Nation C escalates against Nation B, it risks driving Nations D and E closer together while potentially sacrificing recently improved relations with Nation D.
This creates what Glenn Snyder terms an "alliance security dilemma"—actions taken to strengthen one relationship may weaken others.⁹ Nation C's domestic constraints further limit its options, creating what Peter Feaver calls a "casualty sensitivity" that adversaries can exploit.¹⁰
Conclusion: The Absence of Stable Equilibrium
The revised scenario suggests no stable Nash equilibrium exists. Religious motivations override traditional cost-benefit calculations, asymmetric capabilities create first-mover advantages, and great power competition constrains superpower intervention. The presence of sacred sites paradoxically weakens rather than strengthens deterrence by creating sanctuary areas that can shelter retaliatory capabilities.
This analysis supports Robert Jervis's observation that "when deterrence fails, it fails completely."¹¹ The combination of religious extremism, asymmetric capabilities, and great power competition creates what complexity theorists call a “chaotic system”—one where small changes in initial conditions can produce dramatically different outcomes. In such environments, traditional game theory reaches its limits, and crisis management becomes a matter of luck as much as strategy.
¹ Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 116-125. ² Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 27-47. ³ Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 145-155. ⁴ Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 58-84. ⁵ Keith B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 89-112. ⁶ Scott D. Sagan, "The Origins of the Pacific War," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (1988): 893-922. ⁷ Glenn H. Snyder, "The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics," World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 461-495. ⁸ Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 21-26. ⁹ Glenn H. Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 180-184. ¹⁰ Peter D. Feaver, "The Civil-Military Problematique," Armed Forces & Society 23, no. 2 (1996): 149-178. ¹¹ Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 74.