Only 42% of Americans approve of the President’s approach towards Iran, a drop since December, finds a new AP poll released Tuesday.
What’s more, fewer than half the country believes the recent nuclear deal with Iran will work. A CNN anchor recently called the deal “a train wreck.”
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Obama insisted his Iran policy was working. He even vowed to veto a bill imposing new economic sanctions on Iran that is working its way through Congress.
“The sanctions that we put in place helped make this opportunity possible. But let me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it,” the President told a Joint Session of Congress.
Yet another new poll released Tuesday finds that Americans strongly support sanctions on Iran, want more sanctions, are skeptical of the nuclear deal the President struck with Iran and don’t believe Iran will keep its end of the bargain.
“A new poll revealed Tuesday that one of the foreign policy achievements that US President Barack Obama is likely to tout – the interim agreement with Iran – may not enjoy broad support among the voting public,” reports the Times of Israel. “According to the study, conducted by the Mellman Group for the Israel Project, while a slim majority of Americans support the deal, a larger number of likely voters wish that sanctions relief had only been granted after Iran dismantles its entire nuclear program.”
“The poll also indicated that for most Americans, preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a ‘higher priority than preventing military action,’ said pollster Mark Mellman,” the Times noted. “The American public, he added, was “overwhelmingly negative in terms of how the administration handled Iran,” with 66% of likely voters polled giving the president a negative evaluation on his Iran policy. The poll surveyed 800 likely voters nationwide, and has a 3.5% margin of error.
- When asked which is more dangerous for the US – allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons or to carry out targeted military strikes against Iran — 54% answered that allowing Iran to develop nuclear capacity was a greater danger.
- When asked again about which are most important goals for the US in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, 68% selected “preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons even if it means launching military strikes” in comparison with slightly over 30% who answered avoiding military strikes even if it allows Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
- The interim agreement with Iran, considered by the administration to be a significant foreign policy milestone of Obama’s second term, was greeted by coolly by voters. When offered a description of the agreement, 55% said that they favored it, while 37% said that they opposed it. Among voters who said that they were already familiar with the agreement, opposition to the deal rose by about 10 points.
- Despite the moderated support for the agreement, 57% of those polled said that US should have forced Iran to abandon its entire nuclear program before releasing sanctions.
- Mellman also found that US voters were cynical as to the future of the agreement – only 35% thought it was at all likely that Iran would live up to the agreement.
- Americans, Mellman found, overwhelmingly support economic sanctions against Tehran in a bipartisan manner – 83% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans said that they supported the sanctions. Fewer than 20% of respondents said that they wanted the sanctions reduced, while 38% said they wanted to see them strengthened….
- Sixty-two percent of those polled said that they supported the demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear infrastructure before receiving any sanctions relief when that position was juxtaposed with the agreement currently in place, in which sanctions are lifted as part of a gradual process.
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