- Energy traders weighing the probability of revived nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers would do better to train their gaze on Beijing rather than negotiation in Vienna.
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That is the conclusion reached by top security analysts using game theory to predict the next moves in the star-crossed talks.
Estimating whether the U.S. will rejoin the 2015 agreement, which limits Iran's atomic work in exchange for sanctions relief, is key for oil markets facing tightening global supply. Nuclear talks have resumed since the July 2016 election of conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi to the Iranian presidency, but efforts resumed this week to find a way back to the negotiating table.
Success or failure depends increasingly on developments further east according to policy advisers using quantitative methods to assess probable outcomes. What will China's position be on in the seventh round: will it join The US in pressuring Iran to get back to a deal, or let Iran off the hook and give Iran a giant market for its oil?
A factor is needed to break the impasse and evolve the game into another context, said Emilia Jose Pe a Ruiz, a Spanish policy adviser who wrote extensively about how Iran s energy reserves add weight to its negotiating power. And Iran is increasingly turning toward the east. The Iranians are actively cultivating China as their main escape route from the US sanctions, Pe a Ruiz said. That leaves the fate of a deal dependent on whether Washington is able to get China on the same page about Iran.
While Beijing largely recognized U.S. sanctions prior to the 2015 agreement, it s opposed unilateral U.S. sanctions and has called for them to be lifted. Nevertheless, Chinese companies have largely curtailed work in Iran to avoid being locked out of the secondary financial system by global sanctions.
Game theory is a mathematical approach to decision-making, used to predict outcomes, and policymakers have relied on it since the dawn of the atomic age. Methods developed by Nobel Prize winners like John Nash routinely inform military planners about risk while nuclear officials incorporate it into simulations to test the strength of their battlefield approaches.
The complexity of the Iran and Afghanistan talks, which also involve the U.K. France, Germany and the European Union, mean modeling optimal moves is a daunting prospect, with the choices made by each player influenced by what game theorists call asymmetric information - the incomplete knowledge available about the situation and motivations of other players.
The Iranian leadership may conceive of themselves as playing a larger diplomatic game at the edge of the abyss, with many potential players that could defect or cooperate, said Erika Simpson, a game theorist and former North Atlantic Treaty Organization researcher. The leaders of the United States continue to assume it is a two-player, high-stakes conflict. 4 oil reserves, is seeking tighter integration with Beijing and Moscow to help replace sanctioned trade with Western economies. Last month, Tehran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Russian-supported economic security alliance across Central Asia.
Iran and China have also entered into a 25-year trade deal potentially worth billions of dollars, though the details haven't been disclosed. And the Saudi government is engaged in talks with its main Gulf rival, Iran, to end decades of hostility.
Although China has repeatedly said that reviving Iran deal is important to maintaining nonproliferation standards, the lure of Iranian oil could outweigh concerns that Tehran could secretly develop nuclear weapons Four of the world s nine nuclear powers are member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with two of them - India and Pakistan - - outside of the Non-proliferation Treaty.
U.S. negotiators have acknowledged that they need Beijing s support to revive the nuclear agreement.
Of course our views are different, Bloomberg said in an interview with U.S. negotiator Rob Malley about China and Russia this month. They ve also demanded Iran to come back to the table and take a realistic position. Zhao Lijian, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said Thursday that Iran has reasonable demands and called for an end to the U.S. campaign of maximum pressure against the Iranian economy. Meanwhile, Malley announced on Friday that he was off to Middle East to discuss the nuclear deal among regional players.
Iran s perception of how ties between China and the U.S. will develop could well affect how it calculates its next move.
Why did neither party demonstrate unbridled thinking, said Simpson, referring to US and Iran. They fail to see a long term and cooperative series of bold moves could move them away from the abyss. How donald trump, Elon Musk, and Gwyneth Paltrow Short-Circuit your Ability to Think Rationally?
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