NEW YORK, April 25. /TASS/. The United States should not resume its military operation against Iran because the conflict may uncontrollably escalate into a world war, a renowned American economist and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University (New York), Professor Jeffrey Sachs said.

"We should be avoiding a return to outright bombing, to renewed military action. That's a very real possibility. And the other possibility, in my view, is pretty much an uncontrolled escalation into full blown war that would become a regional war, and that could become a world war," he told journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview.

The expert went on to say that if attacks on Iran resume, Tehran will "strike back, and strike back very hard and very rapidly."

"What we have all learned also since February 28, since the start of this war, is that the entire Gulf region is exposed to missile fire from Iran, as is Israel, in fact," he continued. "We also have come to understand that the anti missile defenses are permeable, limited, even depleted in many areas. But we know that the desalination plants in the Gulf region, the oil and the gas fields, the port facilities, are not protected systematically and comprehensively against Iranian attacks, and Iran would completely, totally, understandably respond to what Trump has repeatedly threatened, which is the destruction of Iran."