The Center for Security Policy — a controversial hawkish think tank led by conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney — has been at the forefront of the anti-Iran nuclear deal campaign. CSP even received a $60,000 donation from an AIPAC affiliated group as part of that campaign back in 2015 to work against President Obama’s diplomatic efforts and the organization more recently has, for example, said the Biden administration should walk away from the negotiations to re-enter the JCPOA.
That’s why it’s a bit odd that CSP promoted a new poll last week finding that many of Americans support it.
A CSP article touted the poll it conducted in conjunction with TIPP as finding that “Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional review of a new Iran deal,” as the headline blared (a finding that isn’t all that significant seeing that it’s largely expected that Congress will indeed review any potential re-entry agreement).
But buried in the article, CSP noted that the same poll also found that a significant majority of those polled who said they are “closely” following news about the accord support rejoining the deal:
38% of respondents are “closely” following stories related to the Iran deal, while 53% are not. … 62% of those following the story support joining the deal, while 33% oppose it.
The reality at this point is that re-joining the Iran nuclear deal isn’t a matter of whether it will prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — we already know that the empirical evidence shows that it will.
The main issue now as to whether the Biden administration re-joins the JCPOA appears to be a political one, and all CSP is doing here is reminding people that Americans support doing just that.
Top photo credit: Ngô Đình Diệm after being shot and killed in the 1963 coup (US National Archives) 
