Three in 4 Americans are concerned about further retaliation from Iran following U.S. military strikes last month, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults said they were concerned or very concerned that Iran would lash out against the United States for the June attacks on three of its nuclear sites. That sentiment held true with majorities across party lines, including among 88% of Democrats, 63% of Republicans and 74% of independents.
Support for the U.S. military bombings was evenly split, with half of Americans agreeing with the action and the other half disapproving.
Broken down by party, support largely fell along ideological lines:
- The military strikes received the greatest level of support from Republicans, 84% of whom agreed or strongly agreed with the move.
- 76% of Democrats disagreed or strongly disagreed with the military action.
- Slightly more independents disagreed with the strikes (54%) than agreed (45%).
To Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, Americans are feeling "some ambivalence" as the U.S. enters another conflict in the Middle East.
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults in the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll said they were concerned or very concerned that Iran would lash out against the United States for the June attacks on three of its nuclear sites.Graphic by Jenna Cohen/PBS News
The poll also found that nearly half of Americans — 48% — consider Iran to be a major threat to the nation's security. An additional 39% say Iran is a minor threat, while 13% think Iran is no threat to U.S. safety.
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On the one hand, most people believe Iran to be some kind of threat, but they're also worried about possible retaliation, Miringhoff said.
"The bottom line is people are concerned about wider war, and they're not quite sure how to proceed to avoid that," he added.
Republicans 45 and older were likely to view Iran as major threat
Seventy-six percent of Republicans age 45 or older viewed Iran as a major threat to the security of the United States, far higher than 48% of U.S. adults overall. For Republicans under 45, that figure dropped to 45%.
Matthew Levitt, director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there's a "clear delta" in the polling on Americans' overall sense of Iran as a threat and the U.S. decision to launch the attack.
READ MORE: Iran's supreme leader warns U.S. against further attacks in his first statement since ceasefire
Some of this is driven in part by partisan politics, he said, but regular Americans may not be closely following each development or aren't aware of the full picture.
"I don't think that it's a new phenomenon that authorities don't always explain particularly clearly to the American public what and why we're doing things," said Levitt, who holds a doctorate in international relations and wrote for the digital law and policy journal Just Security about why the U.S. felt it needed to move forward with strikes. "Here we're dropping massive munitions on a foreign country in support of a war that doesn't directly involve us."
Support for the U.S. military bombings was evenly split, with half of Americans agreeing with the action and the other half disapproving. Graphic by Jenna Cohen/PBS News
PBS News spoke with several poll respondents about their views on the U.S. airstrikes.
Chad Hines, a 45-year-old Republican in Texas, said his first reaction was "'Why?'" But with more information released in the days that followed, Hines said he now believes the U.S. military action was a preventative measure to ensure Iran wasn't capable of sending a nuclear weapon toward Israel.
Hines doesn't think Iran is able to carry out an overt retaliatory attack against the U.S., but he believes that the nation could carry out a reprisal in the long term, such as a terror plot inside the U.S.
Chris Spencer, a 46-year-old Republican in Ohio, wasn't surprised by the U.S. airstrikes, noting how debate over Iran's nuclear program has been ongoing for years.
"I don't think it's really a Donald Trump issue. It's more of a United States versus instability in the Middle East issue," he said. "I just think [Trump] was the one who pulled the trigger on it."
Spencer, though, wishes Trump had given Congress more forewarning about – if not input into – his decision.
"There's a risk of all kinds of downstream repercussions from that decision," he said, adding he thought it's fair to say other government leaders should have had at least knowledge of the decision.
Trump's approval rating remains underwater though steady
The last month did not seem to change how Americans view Trump's foreign policy or his leadership more generally. His approval rating is hovering at 43%, about where it was in April, according to Marist data.
On foreign policy, a majority – 52% – disapproves of Trump's handling of international affairs, while 41% approve. While the percentage of people who approve of his foreign policy rose by 2%, the change falls within the margin of error.
Joyce LeCompte, a 62-year-old Democrat in Washington state, has strongly disapproved of Trump's actions in his second term, saying "his presidency 2.0 has been worse than the first."
She found the U.S. airstrikes on Iran unnecessary, adding, in her view, to "the destabilization of the Middle East," which "is not making us any safer." She also said she believes that Trump "is so out of balance in terms of just overriding congressional authority."
"We have a system of government," LeCompte said. "There's supposed to be three co-equal branches for a reason."
Steven Singh, a 45-year-old independent in Southern California, said he's somewhere in the middle when it comes to grading Trump's actions since taking office a second time.
"There are certain foreign policy aspects that I approve of, especially in understanding that that's a primary function of the president's role," Singh said. "But I'm very much against presidents who try to legislate, especially domestic policy that falls outside their scope."
Miringoff said people are following the back-and-forth movement of some of Trump's policies, which "creates some uncertainty in people's minds as to whether what's happening is going to be successful or not."
He added that this may be why, to a large degree, Trump's approval rates continue to be upside down.
"They're steady, but they're upside down," he said.