Monday, October 8, 2012

Gaming an Iran War at NewsWeek

Via NewsWeek's Daily Beast:
Will America get pulled into another Mideast war? We hosted a ‘war game’ with former U.S. officials to find out.  Meet the 'war game' players.

It’s 5 in the morning when the phone rings at the beachfront home of Dan Shapiro, the American ambassador to Israel. On the line is Rafi Barak, the head of Israel’s foreign ministry, sounding tense. Israel has struck six Iranian nuclear facilities overnight, causing extensive damage, he says. Israeli’s foreign minister will soon be calling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with details.
Iran Nuclear
The military complex at Parchin, Iran, in 2004. 
(DigitalGlobe-Institute for Science and International Security via AP)
Thirty minutes later, Shapiro and a team from the U.S. Embassy that includes the military attaché and the CIA station chief arrive at Israel’s Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv for a briefing. Operation Whirlwind, they’re told, involved dozens of Israeli warplanes; covert landings in Ethiopia, India, and Saudi Arabia; and a complicated choreography of electronic jammings and midair refuelings. One Israeli plane went down during the offensive, but the rest of the operation, a huge undertaking for Israel, went off cleanly....MUCH MORE (Hint: it spins out of control pretty fast)