WASHINGTON, April 19: Members of the US Congress and top government officials will be invited to play out options in a fictional crisis involving Iran in a Pentagon-sponsored exercise in July, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The exercise, which was first reported by USA Today, comes amid press reports of stepped up military planning in Washington for strike options.

The July 18 exercise is designed to give senior policymakers, military leaders and members of Congress an opportunity to explore the kinds of options they may be faced with in a real crisis.

Groups of about 15 to 20 people will react to an unfolding series of events in a fictional scenario during a morning-long conference at the National Defence University.

“We develop scenarios based on things that are fairly current in the real world, but the schedule is set way in advance,” said David Thomas, a spokesman for the NDU, the Pentagon’s school for advanced military education and research.

“The intent is to teach, to educate, the complexity of decisions in formulating policy,” he said. “So there is no school solution.”

“We may draw from something that happened in real life or could happen in real life to make it as current or realistic as possible,” he said.

He said the university’s National Strategic Gaming Centre, which devises the exercises, has not yet developed the scenario for the Iran exercise.

Currently, they are preparing for another exercise on US-China issues that is scheduled for next month.

Past exercises have explored the ramifications of events such as an escalation of proliferation concerns on the Korean peninsula and a crisis over the Taiwan Straits.

Others had as their premise terrorist attacks on the US transportation system, a cyber-attack on public utilities, a terrorist attack with biological agents, and a disruption of the US agricultural infrastructure. —AFP