American Public Opposes War with Iran

By Tom Hayden 

The Peace Exchange 
September 18, 2012

http://tomhayden.com/home/american-public-opposes-war-with-iran.html

The American public overwhelmingly opposes a unilateral
military strike against Iran and, according to the New York
Times, 59% say, "If Israel bombs Iran and ignites a war, the
United States should not come to its ally's defense." The US
government should not come to Israel's defense if Tel Aviv
starts a war against Teheran.

Among key findings of a survey conducted by the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs are these:

    51% oppose the UN authorizing a strike on Iran, 70%
    oppose a unilateral U.S. strike on Iran, and 59% do not
    want to get involved in a potential Iran-Israel war; 45%
    favor the UN authorization of a strike;

    "In the hypothetical situation in which Israel were to
    bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran were to retaliate
    against Israel, and the two were to go to war, only 38
    percent say the United States should bring its military
    forces into the war on the side of Israel. A majority
    (59%) says it should not." (p. 30)

    54% do support an attack by U.S. ground troops against
    terrorist training camps and facilities, down from 82% in
    2002.

    To deal with the crisis in Syria, majorities of Americans
    support diplomatic and economic sanctions (63%) as well
    as a no-fly zone in Syria (58%).

Those numbers may be what is causing Benyamin Netanyahu, and
his allies in AIPAC, to step up their campaign of implied
political threats against the Obama administration for its
relative caution over Iran's nuclear program.

As conversations in Washington revealed last week, the
Israelis and AIPAC have created a rising temperature of war
fever on Capitol Hill. "AIPAC was just in town, and the
pressure is going up like war is inevitable," said one member
of Congress who declined to speak on the record. It seems
apparent that AIPAC deploys the ground troops for the
lobbying campaign in coordination with Netanyahu's attacks on
the Obama administration over the television airwaves. On the
near sidelines, Mitt Romney, his consultants Dan Senor and
Eliot Cohen and funders like Sheldon Adelson, are pushing an
even more aggressive policy than Obama's. One political
danger for Romney and AIPAC is the growing appearance that
they are exploiting a presidential campaign to push the US
into war.

During a George Stephanopoulos interview last week, Romney
stumbled confusedly in describing his more aggressive stance.
Romney said he would stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear
weapon, the same position taken by Obama. What Romney
apparently meant to say was that he would stop Iran from
developing a nuclear capability, which is the Israeli
position. As Romney said during his largely secret July visit
to Israel, "Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability
presents an intolerable threat to Israel.

One of Romney's unnamed advisers said of the candidate's
stumble that "you've got to give him some slack," raising an
alarm that the brinksmanship could spiral out of control.

Meanwhile, the opinion survey indicates that the American
people continue to be skeptical about being drawn into
another Middle East conflict. Even within the foreign policy
establishment, there are significant dissents against the US
tilt, as exemplified in the dramatic cover title in the
July/August Foreign Affairs magazine, "Why Iran Should Get
the Bomb." The recent Non-Aligned Summit of 120 countries was
united behind Iran's sovereign right to a nuclear program, a
further measure of gap between American hawks and global
political opinion.

The question is whether Obama will be able to hold out
against the Israeli and AIPAC pressure in the volatile weeks
ahead. Even if he can, the pressure for regime change against
the "crazy people" in Iran (the term is Netanyahu's) will
grow among key elites in the US, Europe, and even among Sunni
regimes like Saudi Arabia who fear a re-balancing of the
Middle Eastern power balance.

"Off the table," apparently, is any deep revision of American
foreign policy, beginning with a recognition of the root
cause of Iran's rage, the 1954 US overthrow of the
democratically elected nationalist government of Mohammad
Mossedegh who planned to nationalize his country's oil
industry. The second step towards lowering the temperature
would be if the US allowed the United Nations to recognize
Palestinian statehood, which the US effectively vetoed last
year.

Neither of these initiatives would bring an overnight change
to the Middle East or quell the religious- nationalist anger
on the streets.

But Iran will continue covertly seeking a nuclear weapons
"capacity" as a deterrent against threats of sabotage,
assassinations and "regime change" by the likes of the CIA or
Mossad. And large sectors of Muslim opinion will remain
hostile to the US until they have a stake in Palestinian
statehood with the US as an "honest broker."

Since these relatively rational alternatives are blocked by
American politics, it becomes steadily more likely that a war
will be launched against Iran at some future point. The
Israelis claim an "existential need" to do away with the
Iranian threat. Nothing could be worse than an Iran with a
nuclear capacity, they claim. But there is one thing that
would be worse: an Iran with a nuclear capacity after an
Israeli or US attack. That scenario may lie ahead.

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