Polling over time shows how few Iranians hold the combination of attitudes that Trump and Netanyahu assume are widespread. In this article in Responsible Statecraft, the authors report on the results from 22 representative surveys in Iran since 2014 using gold-standard methods for polling in authoritarian countries. Their analysis reveals why it was a poor gamble to bet that air power could precipitate a popular overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Using pooled data from 15 polls conducted between 2014 and 2024, the authors compared respondents with favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward the United States, both before and after Washington’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. The minority favorable toward the United States dropped sharply from 26.5% before withdrawal to 14.3% afterward.
This shrinking pro-U.S. minority does not resemble the constituency imagined by maximum-pressure advocates. Instead, the authors argue, it is more supportive of diplomacy than the rest of the public, more attentive to the human costs of sanctions, and surprisingly nationalistic on security questions.