What Iranians think of the US
After the Trump administration killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike on Jan. 3, anti-American protests in Iran subsequently spiked, with thousands mourning Soleimani’s passing.
As someone who studies the U.S. image and world opinion, I am aware that this event is rapidly evolving, so it’s difficult to determine how things will settle. Polls aren’t yet available to reflect Iranians’ views on these recent incidents.
Good data are hard to come by, but IranPoll, a Canadian-based polling company, sheds some light. IranPoll has focused on Iran exclusively for years and provides unique survey data, especially from surveys conducted from May to October 2019 of 1,000 Iranians.
Anti-Americanism
Iranians have felt strongly antagonistic toward the United States in recent years.
Since President Donald Trump took office, unfavorability of the US among Iranians steadily increased, from 71 per cent in January 2016 to 86 per cent in May 2019.
These findings overlap with Gallup’s Annual Global End of Year Survey. In 2017, Gallup reported that 81 per cent of Iranians held unfavorable views toward
Trump.America’s soft power – its ability to attract others to follow its example – is in a shambles among the Iranian public.
IranPoll compared survey data collected by Zogby, another polling firm, showing that Iranians have had a declining view of American values over the last 15 years.
For example, two-thirds of respondents agreed in 2019 that “America is a dangerous country that seeks confrontation and control,” compared to just under half in 2005.
Shreds of the nuclear deal
The United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal, back in May 2018.
At that time, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced 12 conditions that Iran would have to meet before America would consider going back to the bargaining table.
Iran hasn’t met these new restrictions, and has now withdrawn from the last restrictions to which it agreed under the Obama administration.
So, is there any hope for support for the deal among the remaining signatories – Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and the European Union – to the agreement? Iranians don’t seem to think so. Although 61 per cent of respondents were confident in 2016 that other countries besides the US would “live up to their obligations toward the nuclear agreement,” this reversed after Trump scrapped the deal in 2018.
As of October 2019, only 30 per cent of Iranians were confident that other signatories would hold up their end of the bargain.
Inside Iran
US-Iran relations are in turmoil. The stakes are quite high, given that the Iranian regime seems resolute now in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But it’s not just the United States and Trump that Iranians have deep antipathy toward. Data shows that Iranians are ambivalent toward their own leadership.
On the one hand, the assassination of Soleimani united Iranians at a level not seen in decades. But after the Iranian government shot down a civilian plane, denied it, then finally admitted so, public protests came out in force against the regime. Following the momentum of the 2009 Green Movement, many youth in Iran still desire more internal social reform.
The gross domestic product per capita in Iran has fallen in recent years, from about US$8,000 in 2012 to $5,265 in 2017. The average Iranian has felt the sting of economic sanctions and worries that the government is taking advantage of the situation through corrupt policies.
In an IranPoll in May 2019, 57 per cent of respondents felt the economy was “run by a few big interests,” compared to just 31% who said that the economy was “run for all the people.”
Meanwhile, half of respondents feel that, compared to the last year, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s efforts to fight economic corruption “remain unchanged” since last year. Another 19 per cent feel Rouhani’s efforts have decreased. Relations between the United States and Iran have been fraught for decades – at least since the US helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The US then supported the long, repressive reign of the shah of Iran, whose security services brutalized Iranian citizens for decades.
The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in, among other consequences, economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations. Since 1984, the US State Department has listed Iran as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons.
Some of the major events in US-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations’ views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation.
In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company’s British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people.
The US feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil.
Unable to settle the dispute, President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the US and the UK to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the shah of Iran, the country’s monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, hand-picked by the CIA. After more than 25 years of relative stability in US-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The writer is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmon
