BRUSSELS, April 3. /TASS/. The US-Israeli military operation against Iran is "absolutely idiotic," John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in an interview with Euractiv.

"Obviously, there are fears about Iran developing a nuclear weapon," he said, adding: "I just consider this bombing campaign to be an absolutely idiotic way of dealing with that."

Mecklin believes that the US and Israel are unlikely to achieve the goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities. "Iran knew it was going to be attacked," he noted. "The odds that it didn’t hide its enriched uranium in a way that it could not be bombed from the air, in my mind, are very, very low," the journalist added.

In his view, the crisis can only be resolved through diplomacy, while a US ground invasion to seize Iran’s nuclear material would likely end in disaster. "Even if he [Trump] did that, you could not erase the knowledge that Iran has on how to enrich uranium and make nuclear weapons," Mecklin pointed out. "The only way is a diplomatic way," he concluded.

Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a metaphorical measure of how close humanity is to extinction. It is intended to warn the global community about danger. The position of its hands reflects the level of global tension linked to nuclear threats, military conflicts, climate change, cyber warfare, bioterrorism, and other risks.

Over its more than 70-year history, the clock’s hands have been adjusted more than 20 times. The furthest they have ever been set was 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, amid optimism following the end of the Cold War.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by researchers who took part in the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons in the early 1940s. After witnessing the consequences of the US atomic bombings of Japan, they turned to pacifism. The journal has been published by the University of Chicago since 1945.