More than eight in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Iran – an opinion that hasn't budged much for 26 years, a new poll shows.
As the United States and other world powers try to hammer out a deal to limit Iran's nuclear weapons production, just 11 percent of Americans have a good view of Iran, while 84 percent have a negative one – putting Iran at the bottom of the list of 22 countries that respondents were asked about in
the Gallup survey released Friday.
When Gallup first asked Americans to rate Iran, in 1989, 5 percent said they had a favorable opinion, the pollster noted.
According to the survey, 77 percent of Americans say the development of nuclear weapons by Iran is a "critical threat," while 16 percent say the threat is important, but not critical.
Democrats are less likely to classify the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb as a critical threat than Republicans; 68 percent of Democrats say Iranian nuclear weapons would be a critical threat, while 91 percent of Republicans thought so, the survey finds.
Last year, 86 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Democrats viewed Iran's development of nuclear weapons as a critical threat.
While Americans see Iran no more favorably today than in years past, only 9 percent consider it America's greatest enemy; 16 percent considered Iran the United States' worst enemy in 2014, and 32 percent thought so in 2012, the poll finds.
This year, Russia, North Korea and China were all named with more frequency than Iran, according to Gallup.
The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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