Comment by jfengel
1 day ago
In the long term solutions will be found, but in the short term they can gain an enormous bargaining chip. If food prices double because we've burnt the last drop from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the administration will give them just about anything they want to avoid utter political destruction.
The game theoretic definition of a threat is something that harms you, but harms them so much that they will avoid forcing you to trigger the threat. It's a different matrix from the Prisoner's Dilemma, but still leaves you guessing about the personality of your opponent. The personality of Iran seems reasonably consistent. The US, less so.
Yeah that is looking at it from US side. If you were Iranian, cutting nose to spite face looks like a bad deal, only as Iranian you have no say in it. As with virus, the ones that survive are the ones that dont cause too much damage and learn to live with adversary. Ebola will never spread as bad as COVID if it kills everyone it touches. Unless it too evolves into gentler version.