Herzog+

Dear John, For deciding strategy in an adversarial situations, the branch of mathematics known as game theory always gives better results than "hunch theory."  Today a game is afoot over Iran’s nuclear aspirations, and hunch theorists by and large have concluded that confrontation is the appropriate strategy for the west.  However, applying game theory to the problem shows that under all scenarios, a properly-conceived strategy of “consorting” with Iran beats any strategy of confrontation. Hunch theory approaches Iran's nuclear program from the premise that if Iran's leaders are telling the truth when they say they are only interested in uranium enrichment for electricity, co-operation is a better strategy than confrontation. And vice-versa. Since hunch theory judges the cost and the probability of wrongly guessing "telling the truth" to be greater than the cost and probability of wrongly guessing "lying," co-operation must be the wrong strat...