Regarding Bueno de Mesquito: rationality is widely misunderstand. It only requires that an actor be able to rank order preferences and that these preferences are fixed in the short-run. Bueno de Mesquito (along with Kugler) have written software which, using such preferences, along with each actor’s power, commitment and risk profile, can give you a likely outcome of any political interaction. He could certainly predict with good accuracy you how any particular crisis will end (assuming he has good data). A crisis involving a nuclear Iran and Israel might very well end with a nuclear exchange. This is easily modeled.