On the heels of President Barack Obama’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, diplomats and pundits continue to try to answer the perplexing question: Will Israel and/or the U.S. launch a military strike on Iran?
Now, one publication is throwing some science into the mix. Or at least political science. Modeled on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock showing “how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction,” The Atlantic has assembled a group of former policymakers, journalists and academics to provide their private opinions, which are then combined into a collective prediction.
The clock is presently set at 10 minutes to midnight, or a 48 percent chance of war.
More from The Atlantic:
War or peace in the Middle East amounts to a coin toss. The probability that the United States or Israel will strike Iran in the next year is 48 percent according to a new project that predicts the chances of conflict–the Iran War Clock. And as a result, the clock is set to 10 minutes to midnight.
The magazine explains how it works:
Each panelist makes an individual estimate about the percentage chance of war and we report the average score. Based on this number, we adjust the Iran War Clock so that the hand moves closer to, or further away from, midnight.
If there is a zero percent chance of war, the clock hand is at 20 minutes to midnight. Each extra 5 percent chance of war moves the hand one minute closer to midnight. So, for instance, a 10 percent chance of war would set the clock at 18 minutes to midnight, and a 75 percent chance of war would set the clock at 5 minutes to midnight. We round up and down, so 48 percent is rounded up to 10 minutes to midnight.
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