A new Gallup poll shows that 55% of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of Iran compared to 33% who approve. This seems to support other recent polls that show the public doesn’t like the administration’s Iran policy. A Quinnipiac poll shows that voters disapprove of the Iran nuclear by 2 to 1, and a CBS News poll shows that 33% disapprove with only 20% approving—71% of those polled by CBS said they believed the White House could have gotten a better deal.
The White House has clearly had a difficult time selling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on its own merits. The inspection and verification regime is deeply flawed; the U.N. arms embargo is being lifted; the Revolutionary Guard and dozens of other terrorists and their front companies will enjoy a cash windfall in the tens of billions of dollars, if not more.
What seems to be even more damaging for the White House is that it keeps trying to turn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the poster boy for the anti-JCPOA camp. That strategy is backfiring. The administration seeks to tar opponents of the Iran deal as “dual loyalists,” beholden to the interests of a foreign country rather than those of the United States. However, the Obama administration has it exactly backwards: It seems that it is because a majority of the American public is against the Iran deal that one recent poll shows that Netanyahu is enjoying a 49% favorable rating—higher, in fact, than Obama, who comes in at 44%. The differences in their unfavorable numbers are even starker, with 26% rating the Israeli prime minister unfavorable, and Obama coming in twice that at 52%.
Exactly one month after John Kerry signed the JCPOA in Vienna July 14 with his Iranian counterparts, it’s become startlingly clear that the American public doesn’t like it and doesn’t trust Iran.
