Poll Feb 14 2006: 80% of Americans think Iran would nuke USA if it gets the bomb
summary: Gallup Poll 14 Feb says
8 in 10 Americans think if Iran get nukes, it will give them to terrorists for use against America. 60% think Iran will nuke the USA itself.
10% want military action now,
68% want diplomacy / sanctions now
18% want to take no action now (… interestingly)
if sanctions fail,
36% want military action, 45% don’t
67% think US won’t do enough to stop Irans bomb but
69% think Bush will be too quick to use military
story from:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/13/poll.iran/
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Poll: Americans nervous about Iran
Bush’s approval rating drops to 39 percent
Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Posted: 10:48 a.m. EST (15:48 GMT)
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President Bush’s approval rating dropped to 39 percent in a new poll.
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(CNN) — Americans are nervous about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, but also worry about the ability of the United States and the United Nations to deal with the situation, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday suggests.
Iran says it is developing a nuclear program to provide energy. The United States, France, England and Germany suspect Iran aims to develop nuclear weapons.
Last month, Iran removed U.N. monitoring seals from its equipment and said it was beginning nuclear research.
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, voted February 4 to report Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions. Iran ended its cooperation with the agency and said it would commence uranium enrichment and halt snap inspections, while still leaving open the possibility of further negotiations.
The 1,000 adults who responded to the telephone poll taken between Thursday and Sunday said they fear the Bush administration will be too quick to use military force if diplomacy fails, and at the same time are concerned the administration won’t do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. (Poll results)
Most respondents saw a high chance that if Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, it would use them against the United States or its ally Israel.
Fifty-nine percent thought Iran would use nuclear weapons against the United States, and 80 percent thought the Iranians would hand them over to terrorists to use against the United States.
More thought Iran would use the weapons against Israel — 77 percent — and about as many — 81 percent — thought Iran would give them to terrorists who wanted to use them against Israel.
Sixty-eight percent of the respondents called for economic and diplomatic action to keep Iran away from atomic weapons, while only 9 percent called for military action.
Even if diplomacy were to fail, only 36 percent of those who responded to the survey thought military action would be called for, while 45 percent said it would not.
Respondents also put little faith in the United Nations, with 51 percent saying they were not confident that the international community could handle Iran.
Moreover, 69 percent said they were concerned that the Bush administration would be too quick to use military force, yet 67 percent were also concerned the United States wouldn’t do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The respondents’ concerns were echoed in President Bush’s overall approval rating, which dropped to 39 percent, down from 42 percent in a poll taken February 6-9.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way the president is handling his job.
The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 3 percentage points
One Response to “Poll Feb 14 2006: 80% of Americans think Iran would nuke USA if it gets the bomb”
February 24th, 2006 at 7:35 am
[...] The Iranians agreed to suspend but not terminate their nuclear weapons program. Our position is they ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program…What we’re interested in is them terminating a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable fashion. George Bush Nov 30, 2005 This quote contains three frightening echoes of White House spin about Saddam’s WMD program before the Iraq invasion: outright untruth, claims that contradict US intelligence assessments, and asking for the impossible. Firstly, the flat error: Iran had just agreed to suspend legitimate experiments in uranium enrichment for nuclear fuel, it had not agreed anything about a weapons program, which it denies having. Secondly, Bush’s talk of a weapons program was contrary to US intelligence estimates - three months earlier, as the NY Times reported on the latest National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus of all US intelligence agencies: “The estimate expresses uncertainty about whether Iran’s ruling clerics have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said. see also Thirdly, as there is currently no evidence that Iran has a weapons program, they are being asked the impossible… to stop something we don’t know they doing. The IAEA, after month’s of go-almost-anywhere, see-almost-anything technical inspections, have found no evidence of a weapons program, yet the issue has been reported to the Security Council by force of political will, not by force of technical evidence…another eerie parallel to pre-war Iraq. The Security Council should decide to do nothing, as some of its members should decide to do nothing but express concern in the absence of evidence; as it did with Iraq. Which would give the White House the opportunity to say, as it did with Iraq, that a coalition of states needs to act unilaterally, out of self defence and in response to the UN and IAEA’s concern. Why would Bush attack Iran? Firstly, if the Security council fails to stop “a nuclear weapons program” in Iran, what alternative does Bush leave himself but to bomb it, given that 80% of Americans believe that Iran will nuke the USA? Although it might seem guaranteed to set the Middle East and the War on Terror aflame, an medium-scale air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be consistent with a great many themes of the Bush administration’s foreign policy: In no particular order: 1. Bush does not want to be “the president who let Iran get the bomb” 2. The US, through John Bolton, has been trying to kick the Non-Proliferation Treaty to death for some years, and to diminish the power of the UN, insisting that unilateral (or coalition) action is the way to maintain international peace. 3. The US says it has secured G8 approval, EU approval, and Australian approval, for the use of force to prevent nuclear proliferation. 4. Israel has threatened for years to bomb Iran’s Bushehr reactor, before it is commissioned, concerned that it could produce a plutonium bomb. No doubt the US shares this concern. But if, somehow, Iran is pressured to stop it current uranium enrichment plans by the UN, the ‘threat’ from the Bushehr reactor will remain. Only a ‘preventive’ air strike will remove that ‘threat’. 5. An air-strike could be a ‘quick and easy win’ in the war on terror, popular at home with a sceptical populace, involving no long-term and deadly commitment of US troops, successfully demonstrating the might and effectiveness of the biggest armed forces on the planet. 6. The Bush Administration has developed a new force for ‘instant’ global strike capacity which the US armed forces have never exercised. Previously, only the nuclear Strategic Command (STRATCOM) was ready for a quick hit, with thousands of nuclear warheads at hair-trigger alert. As Bill Arkin reported, in 2004 STRATCOM was tasked with instant readiness for conventional AND nuclear attacks, especially on countries of proliferation concern. [...]
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