We had a set of actors in the steady-state article, but I’ve since read the news – possibly getting more knowledgeable in the process – and refined the set of actors to the following:

• The Israeli government (IG), which wants a continuation of the current level of hostilities;
• The part of the Israeli people who dislike the war (Id for doves), and those in favour of it (Ih for hawks);
• Hamas (HA), who also thinks the current situation is desirable;
• The Palestinian Authority (PA), who would prefer a full peace as proof that Arabs and Israelis can co-exist;
• The us (US), who sorta-kinda want a ceasefire but not enough to cut off Israel’s supply;
• The Iranian government (IR), who wants increased hostilities because it furthers their position as a local hegemon; and finally
• We will be lumping together some other regional powers like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia into a single peace brokering force (PB), because they appear to have a similar desire for a ceasefire to begin with.

We enter these actors into the model:

model = AMModel([
  #           Sal. Inf. Pref.
  Actor("IG", 1.0, 0.7, 0.2),
  Actor("Id", 0.9, 0.2, 1.0),
  Actor("Ih", 0.9, 0.2, 0.2),
  Actor("HA", 1.0, 0.1, 0.2),
  Actor("PA", 0.9, 0.3, 1.0),
  Actor("US", 0.8, 0.9, 0.5),
  Actor("IR", 1.0, 0.9, 0.0),
  Actor("PB", 0.8, 0.6, 0.5),
])

Here, we leave out some other obvious actors that have a stake in the dispute.2² The people in Gaza, various agreeing members of the un, Houthis, Hezbollah, and China are some that come to mind. The reason we leave them out is that in my estimation, their power levels for this dispute are low enough that they are minor players in deciding the near-term prospect of peace in Gaza. Including them would not improve the predictive power of the model, it would just clutter the display.

Recall that on this scale, 0.0 means intensified hostilities, 0.2 means continued hostilities, 0.5 means ceasefire, and toward 1.0 would be a full peace agreement.3³ After publishing this article, I’ve had some regrets regarding how this scale is constructed. If I did it over, I would likely use a different scale, but I don’t want to re-write the article now.

It may be surprising that an actor like Iran seems to wield so much influence.4⁴ I certainly gave them less influence in the previous article. The reason is not that they are very convincing at a negotiating table, but rather that they are good at fueling conflicts in the region through intermediaries. They can make regional countries act a certain way not by smooth talking, but through use of proxy force.

At this point, we can look at our new power landscape.

print_landscape(model)

0.0 ########     IR                  
0.1                                  
0.2 ########     IG Ih HA            
0.3                                  
0.4                                  
0.5 ##########   US PB               
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8                                  
0.9                                  
1.0 ####         Id PA

We note that since the last article was written, it appears that the us has started favouring a ceasefire over continued hostilities.

In this type of modeling, Bueno de Mesquita often presents one actor’s outlook through a scatter plot. We will see precise details on the computations in a separate article, but for now, we’ll just say that each pair of countries has a specific 2D coordinate that represents their relationship in the dispute.

In line with what Bueno de Mesquita often does himself, I’ve reduced this 2D space into octants. If we look at the world from our point of view, we can see other actors A, B, C, D, E, F, G in these positions:

From our perspective:

                   C | B
                     |
 D                 2 | 1                 A
-----------------AMBIVALENT-----------------
                   3 | 4                 G
                     |
 E                   | F

• Actors A and B are in quadrant 1. This quadrant is called the fight or crisis quadrant. A and B are the actors with which we may end up in a more serious conflict. (The difference between A and B is that we have the upper hand in a conflict against A, while B has the upper hand against us.)
• Actors C and D (those in quadrant 2) have the upper hand in an interaction with us, but to different degrees:
  • Actors C may try to get us to compromise and partially satisfy C’s demands, while
  • Actors D may try to convince us to adopt their preference entirely.
• Actors E (those in quadrant 3) are those for which neither we nor they have any gain in interacting with.
• Actors F and G (those in quadrant 4) are those we have the upper hand aganist, but to different degeres:
  • We may try to convince actors F to adopt our preference entirely, whereas
  • We may try to get actors G to compromise and partially satisfy our demands..
• Actors ambivalent are the ones which roughly agree with us so there’s no reason for us to interact.

One thing this rough version of the diagram does not capture is how intensely each actor desires to attain or avoid the interaction represented by a coordinate. This is useful information but I haven’t figured out a good way to include it in a lo-fi diagram like this. In lieu of a good way, I’ve chosen a bad way.

Each actor has four digits appended to the end of their name in the scatterplot, with the first two digits being the utility of the challenging actor and the last two being the utility of the actor from whose perspective we are looking. The signs of the utilities must be inferred from the quadrant the point is in. So for example, if a point is labeled IR1203, that might represent the Iranian government has a +1.2 utility and the actor whose perspective we take has a utility of -0.3.6⁶ Can you tell I have been playing with openScope recently?

As a space-saving shortcut, if both numbers start with 0, the zeroes can be omitted. So instead of writing PA0103 we may write PA13.

We can now perform what Bueno de Mesquita calls comparative statics, which is basically playing out various what if scenarios based on what we have seen so far. Here are some ideas:

• What if that conflict between Iran and Israel does happen and resolves in Iran’s favour, bringing Israel’s preference to Iran’s? What if it resolves in Israel’s favour?
• What if Iran gets a compromise out of the us?
• What if the US gets a compromise out of Hamas? (Unfortunately, this doesn’t change much because aside from determining the outcome, Hamas is not an influential force on other actors. This shouldn’t be surprising – the expected utility was low, after all.)
• What if Iran manages to anger the Israeli doves? (Not a whole lot, it turns out. The doves are just an easy target thanks to their low influence and edgy preference of full peace.)

An interaction in the conflict/crisis quadrant has a highly uncertain outcome, and it can go either way. We’ll look at two of the extreme outcomes possible.

This might sound good for Iran, but it’s not clear that it actually is. The second-order effects are that

explore_scenario(
    model,
    # Which actors gets which new positions?
    { 'US': 0.3 },
    # From which actors' perspectives will we look at the result?
    [ 'IG', 'US' ]
)

0.0 #########    IR                  
0.1                                  
0.2 ##########   IG Ih HA            
0.3 #######      US                  
0.4                                  
0.5 #####        PB                  
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8                                  
0.9                                  
1.0 #####        Id PA               

From the perspective of IG:

                               |                               
                               |                               
                               |                      US00 IR00
-----------------------------Ih HA-----------------------------
                               |                 Id57 PA57 PB11
                               |                               
                               |                               

From the perspective of US:

                               | IG00 IR20                     
                               |                               
                               |                               
---------------------------------------------------------------
                               |       Id16 Ih00 HA00 PA15 PB00
                               |                               
                               |

In other words

• Israel gets a slight upper hand in future conflicts against Iran (because of stronger support from the us in favour of military interventions), and
• The us will then no longer be satisfied with compromising to Iran but will instead ready themselves to further escalate the dispute.

The latter goes against my intuition: my feeling suggested the us would leave the dispute at the current retaliation effort, but the model suggests it may increase. But if I think about it, this outcome represents the us getting dragged further into the conflict, which surely increasing their likelihood of engaging with all other actors.

This does not change all that much, because the Israeli doves are not very influential according to these assumptions. However, a compromise would make them more vulnerable to challenges from several other strong actors.

explore_scenario(
    model,
    # Which actors gets which new positions?
    { 'Id': 0.8 },
    # From which actors' perspectives will we look at the result?
    [ 'Id' ]
)

0.0 ########     IR                  
0.1                                  
0.2 ########     IG Ih HA            
0.3                                  
0.4                                  
0.5 ##########   US PB               
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8 ##           Id                  
0.9                                  
1.0 ##           PA                  

From the perspective of Id:

                   Ih33 IR1102 |                               
                               |                               
IG55 HA24 US12 PB12            |                               
---------------------------------------------------------------
                               |                           PA14
                               |                               
                               |

For example, once they have compromised with the peace brokers, the peace brokers will think they can get them to fully support a ceasefire, rather than the full peace they would have wanted from the start.

Remember how, when Iran stopped escalating the situation and accepted the status quo, the us might have a shot at convincing Israel that a ceasefire is appropriate? What happens if they succeed?

explore_scenario(
    model,
    # Which actors gets which new positions?
    { 'IR': 0.2, 'IG': 0.5 },
    # From which actors' perspectives will we look at the result?
    [ 'IG', 'HA' ]
)

0.0                                  
0.1                                  
0.2 ######       Ih HA IR            
0.3                                  
0.4                                  
0.5 ##########   IG US PB            
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8                                  
0.9                                  
1.0 ##           Id PA               

From the perspective of IG:

                               |                               
                               |                               
                               |                               
-----------------------------US PB-----------------------------
                               |                      Ih12 HA12
                               |                               
                               | Id54 PA54 IR00                

From the perspective of HA:

                IG21 US11 PB11 |                               
                               |                               
                               |                               
-----------------------------Ih IR-----------------------------
                               |                               
                               |                               
                               | Id43 PA43

At that point, the Israeli governments negotiating position with its doves and the pa becomes very strong. This lack of support for continued violence is enough to try to get Hamas to compromise closer to a ceasefire as well.

explore_scenario(
    model,
    # Which actors gets which new positions?
    { 'IR': 0.2, 'IG': 0.5, 'PA': 0.5, 'Id': 0.5, 'HA': 0.3 },
    # From which actors' perspectives will we look at the result?
    [ 'HA' ]
)

0.0                                  
0.1                                  
0.2 #####        Ih IR               
0.3              HA                  
0.4                                  
0.5 ##########   IG Id PA US PB      
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8                                  
0.9                                  
1.0                                  

From the perspective of HA:

 IG11 Id40 PA40 US10 IR30 PB00 |                               
                               |                               
                               |                               
---------------------------------------------------------------
                               |                           Ih00
                               |                               
                               |

With this level of support for a ceasefire, most actors have a chance of issuing credible enough thretas that Hamas compromise even further toward a ceasefire.

Although we haven’t found an easy way to a ceasefire with the current set of actors snd priorities, we can pretend for a second that we have, and try to explore what the next steps would be.

In other words, both the Israeli government and Hamas now support a ceasefire, and then the peace brokering force and the us switch to supporting a full peace agreement.9⁹ Iran has also left their extreme position, because I don’t see a ceasefire as possible unless that happens.

explore_scenario(
    model,
    # Which actors gets which new positions?
    { 'IR': 0.2, 'IG': 0.5, 'HA': 0.5, 'PB': 1.0, 'US': 1.0 },
    # From which actors' perspectives will we look at the result?
    [ 'IG', 'PB' ]
)

0.0                                  
0.1                                  
0.2 #######      Ih IR               
0.3                                  
0.4                                  
0.5 #####        IG HA               
0.6                                  
0.7                                  
0.8                                  
0.9                                  
1.0 ##########   Id PA US PB         

From the perspective of IG:

                               | Id22 PA32 IR10                
                               |                               
                               |                               
------------------------------HA-------------------------------
                               |                           Ih12
                               |                               
                               | US21 PB22                     

From the perspective of PB:

                          IR63 |                               
                               |                               
IG22 HA11                      |                               
---------------------------Id PA US----------------------------
                               |                               
                               |                               
                          Ih31 |

Oddly enough, the peace brokering force is still rather weak. They consider themselves vulnerable to a challenge from all three main belligerent actors (Israeli government, Hamas, and Iran) and is not obviously able to hold firm in its commitment to full peace. The Israeli government thinks of itself as capable of convincing both the us and the peace brokering force that a temporary ceasefire is what’s best for the region.

This is the part that still takes some subjective judgment because we have not yet achieved the full dynamic actor–motivation model. Looking back at the comparative statics we played, we suspect that:

• If the us gets more involved – which can happen due to Iranian attacks – Israel becomes a more dominating force in the region and the dispute will escalate.
• Iran disengaging slightly because of combat losses would increase the support of a caesefire. (Both by making it easier to convince the hawks, and – contrary to intuition – by making the doves more accepting of the current level of violence.)
• The peace brokering force is weak however we look at it, and there is no clear way toward a ceasefire with this set of actors. If it happens, though, it would be because the us exploits the moment where Iran has stepped back slightly, and manages to wrest a concession from an Israeli government that it wasn’t interested in until it was forced to. But this conflict would be contentious and the outcome would be unusually uncertain.
• Then even if we did get to a ceasefire, peace is a distant prospect after that.

So all in all, a peace agreement in the near term seems very unlikely. Weighing together the above, I would judge the following conditional probabilities to be necessary, considering that it all has to happen within the next four months:

• Iran disengages slightly: 50 %.
• The us exploits that moment and overpowers the desires of the Israeli government: 40 %.
• Ceasefire turns into a peace deal: 20 %.10¹⁰ This seems even less likely than that, but there’s a lot of ludic uncertainty involved so it would be unwise to be too confident.

In total, that’s 4 %. We would be wise to adjust upward because four months is a long time and the actors may change during that time, so let’s say 12 %.

This is much more aggressive than our previous gut feeling of 49 %, but then we have to remember that forecast was issued about two months earlier when uncertainties were indeed larger. Also, I was probably optimistic even then – I think I have a general peace bias.