As U.S.-Iran talks continue, new polling finds that nearly two-thirds of Republicans support a negotiated deal on Iran’s nuclear program over military action intended to destroy it.
Indeed, polling published by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll program and conducted by the SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus from May 2 through 5, surveying over 1,000 respondents over 18, showed that a majority of Americans, 69% — including 64% percent of Republicans — view a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, with monitoring, as the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
In contrast, 14% of respondents, including 24% of Republicans, preferred the U.S. take military action to inhibit or destroy Iran’s nuclear program. At 78%, Democrats remained more likely to support a negotiated deal over military action overall.
Asked about the prospects of Israel or Iran having nuclear weapons, further, a majority of respondents (70%) responded that neither country having such weapons would ultimately be the “least dangerous” for stability of the Middle East region. Israel is widely believed to have 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads, though its government (and the U.S. government) neither confirms nor denies its nuclear weapons program. Some observers have estimated Israel’s arsenal as much higher, closer to 400 warheads.
The polling comes amid continued U.S.-Iran talks, which have proceeded despite their challenges. Indeed, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei deemed the last round of negotiations “difficult,” yet “useful to better understand each other’s positions and to find reasonable & realistic ways to address the differences,” in an X post yesterday.
Trump’s foreign policy envoy Steve Witkoff also affirmed a policy of negotiated settlement over Iran’s nuclear program in an interview with Breitbart last week. But as noted in a piece by Sina Toossi on RS today, however, Witkoff shared one thing in common with the Iranians — that “no enrichment” is a red line, for the Americans who don’t want any enrichment, and for the Iranians, who say they must have it for their civilian nuclear program.
Stavroula Pabst is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft.
Top image credit: An Iranian visitor visits the former U.S. embassy in downtown Tehran, Iran, on April 12, 2025, on the day of the Iran-U.S. nuclear discussions. According to Iranian officials, indirect nuclear discussions between Iran and the United States begin in Muscat, Oman, on April 12. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)NO USE FRANCE
Top Image Credit: Top photo credit: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) (Gage Skidmore/Flickr); Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect); Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)(Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)
Even as polling indicates that a majority of Trump voters don't want to go to war with Iran on behalf of Israel, it’s been difficult to change GOP minds on Capitol Hill.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t strong conservative voices trying to do just that.
Indeed, some Republicans have come out swinging against the prospects of the U.S. joining Israel in their attacks against Iran. “This is not our war,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky) proclaimed in an X post where he invited colleagues to support his recently introduced War Powers Resolution, which would prevent the U.S. from engaging in any “hostilities” against Iran if passed. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) likewise called Republicans pushing conflict with Iran “war pimps.”
“I just don’t see American boys and girls going to a faraway land that many of us couldn’t even find on a map,” Burchett told CNN’s John Berman. “We do not need a three-front war in our lifetime right now. I just don’t think that’s the route to go. There’ll be room for debate, but I think we ought to let the president do his negotiating skills. That’s what I elected him to do.”
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a vocal supporter of Israel, nonetheless also voiced concern about the U.S. getting dragged into conflict. He told Manu Raju, CNN’s Chief Congressional Correspondent, that Israel could act in its own interests. But, he explained, “it’s a very different thing for us to then say, ‘We are going to offensively, affirmatively go strike Iran or insert ourselves into the conflict.’ That to me is — that's a whole different matter…I'd be real concerned about that.”
“I don't want us fighting a war,” Hawley said. “I don't want another Mid-east war.”
Along similar lines, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that “it’s not the U.S.’s job to be involved” in Israel’s war with Iran on NBC’s Meet the Press.
And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) warned that other conservatives’ hawkishness over war with Iran could “fracture” the MAGA movement. “Americans want cheap gas, groceries, bills, and housing. They want affordable insurance, safe communities, and good education for their children. They want a government that works on these issues,” Greene wrote on X Tuesday.
“Considering Americans pay for the entire government and government salaries with their hard earned tax dollars, this is where our focus should be. Not going into another foreign war.”
But while some Republicans want to put a red light on the lurch to intervention, many others are pushing explicitly to participate in it. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D,), for example, said he would support a U.S. decision to strike Iran, or otherwise "assist Israel in getting the job done."
Iran “pledged to wipe out the United States of America. I prefer not to let them get here…I prefer preemptive prevention of war rather than having to end one after it gets to our soil, right?,” Cramer asserted.
"Either you want [Iran] to have a nuclear weapon, or you don't," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters this week. "And if you don't, if diplomacy fails, you use force."
Could support for war come back to bite?
Observers tell RS that lawmakers pushing for war are holding onto dated foreign policy positions — even if such positions are increasingly diverging from the conservative base.
"Most Republican officeholders have not developed a foreign-policy outlook of their own. They take their bearings from what the old-guard conservative movement used to say and from what President Trump says now," Daniel McCarthy, syndicated columnist and editor of Modern Age journal, told RS. "It was similar in 2003, when most Republicans went along with George W. Bush’s Iraq War.”
As Jim Antle, Executive Editor of The Washington Examiner, told RS: “Congressional GOP hasn't caught up [with their base]. [There are] only small numbers of populists and libertarians. Old-school moderates are almost all gone. Those are the restraint-friendly elements of the party.”
"Also Trump is the main man," he added. "If he says bomb, we bomb. If he says peace, we are flipping the peace sign."
In comments to RS, McCarthy highlighted the story of the late Republican Congressman Walter Jones, who realized later in the Iraq War his previous support of the conflict was disastrous for his constituents, a military-heavy district in North Carolina. He was politically sidelined in Congress for his dovish change of heart.
“(He) did exactly what they are doing now. He went along with the zombie-like shuffle to war; he even coined the term 'freedom fries,'" McCarthy said. “But later he was ashamed of how easily he’d been led into supporting a policy that was disastrous for the country and his district. Jones would be horrified if he were alive to see his fellow legislators making the same mistakes. They can avoid that by learning from Jones’s experience.”
Jones’ career suffered because he recanted his Iraq war support. But McCarthy supposes that Republicans who are hesitant to speak against war with Iran might do well to consider the political risks of not speaking out against it.
“Republican officeholders too often believe there’s safety in a crowd, and it’s better to be wrong in a group than to be right on your own," McCarthy said. "But the public turned against the whole party because of Bush’s wars, and anything like a repeat of them will turn the force of populism against the GOP."
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Official Opening Ceremony for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Summit 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. (Shutterstock/ Gints Ivuskans)
Official Opening Ceremony for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Summit 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. (Shutterstock/ Gints Ivuskans)
In the run up to the NATO Summit at The Hague next week, June 24-25, President Donald Trump and his administration should present a clear U.S. plan for peace in Ukraine to the European and Ukrainian governments — one that goes well beyond just a ceasefire.
While it is understandable that Trump would like to walk away from the Ukraine peace process, given President Vladimir Putin’s intransigence and now the new war in the Middle East, he and his team need to state clearly the parameters of a deal that they think will bring a lasting peace. Walking away from the effort to end the war prematurely leaves Washington in continued danger of being drawn into a new crisis as long as the U.S. continues to supply Ukraine with weapons and intelligence.
On the other hand, if Washington abandons the peace effort and stops helping Ukraine, that country’s defenses will be in acute danger of collapse.
The Trump administration therefore needs to use the NATO summit to present Europe and Ukraine with the clear terms of what it regards as a reasonable and practicable peace settlement as the basis for negotiation with Russia. If Kyiv and Brussels accept, then these terms should be presented to Moscow, and if Moscow refuses to negotiate on this basis, then U.S. aid to Ukraine should continue unchanged.
If however the Ukrainians and Europeans reject the proposed terms, then they should be told that their refusal will lead to an end to Washington’s support for Ukraine, and that if European countries wish to continue to support the war, they will have to do so on their own.
This may seem a harsh approach, but in fact it will help the Ukrainian government. For even if leading Ukrainian officials now see that the conditions for peace that Ukraine has set are impossible to achieve, domestic political fears constrain them from changing course.
This is common throughout history. France fought on for years in Indochina and Algeria after it was clear that no French victory was possible, because the French establishment was politically incapable of admitting this. The same was true of the U.S. in Vietnam. The only way that Ukrainian leaders can get away with accepting a compromise peace is if they can truthfully tell their own hardliners that Washington and NATO gave them no choice.
The U.S. administration also needs to show the Russians what they have to gain from a settlement — and by the same token, what they would lose by rejecting it. If the Russian government rejects these terms as a basis for negotiation after Ukraine has accepted them, then U.S. aid to Ukraine should continue, until the Russians are prepared to compromise along these lines.
The peace terms that the U.S. administration should put forward include the following:
The ceasefire line should run along the line where the battlefront stands (with limited possibility for territorial swaps).
Russia and Ukraine pledge not to try to change this line through force, subversion, or economic pressure.
The legal status of all five oblasts (including the parts still held by Ukraine) to be subject to future negotiation under the auspices of the UN, and with reference to the wishes of local populations.
Both sides pledge not to carry out terrorist attacks, subversion, and attempts to undermine sovereignty on each other’s territory (including Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine).
All Western sanctions against Russia are suspended, with a snap-back proviso for violation.
Russian assets held in Europe are paid into a UN fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, to be split 50:50 between areas controlled by the Ukrainian government and Russia.
Ukraine introduces guarantees for Russian linguistic and cultural rights into the constitution. Russia does the same for Ukrainians in Russia.
Ukraine returns the principle of neutrality to the Ukrainian constitution and abandons its intention of joining NATO.
NATO pledges no further enlargement, and the United States pledges to veto any proposed new candidates.
Russia formally agrees to Ukraine’s EU accession, and EU promises to foster this.
Russia recognizes Ukraine’s right of self-defense and abandons its demand for limits on size of the Ukrainian army.
The U.S. pledges not to provide Ukraine with missiles, main battle tanks, or fighter aircraft.
NATO countries pledge not to send troops to Ukraine; and peacekeepers are drawn from neutral countries under the authority of the UN.
The U.S. pledges not to station U.S. troops in countries on Russia’s borders (including Romania), with a snap-back proviso that this pledge will be canceled if Russia attacks Ukraine again.
The U.S. agrees not to station U.S. intermediate-range missiles in Germany in return for Russia’s withdrawal of its missiles from Kaliningrad and Belarus.
The U.S. and Russia agree to enter into negotiations for a new START treaty.
The UN Security Council creates a Committee on European Security made up of representatives of the five permanent members. If India and/or Brazil agree to send substantial numbers of peacekeepers to Ukraine, they will be added to this committee. In this case, Germany will also be added. The remit of this committee will be to discuss and propose solutions for actual, frozen and potential conflicts on the European continent, and to act as a mechanism for giving the international community early warning of possible impending crises.
The Trump administration should seek public endorsement by NATO of these positions and a second public statement affirming the continued commitment by the United States and other NATO members to NATO as a defensive alliance within its present borders. The United States should reiterate that it will honor its existing formal treaty obligations including its commitment to the defense of existing NATO allies.
It is however under no obligation — neither legal nor moral — to extend those commitments further, in terms of NATO’s membership or NATO’s mission. The United States entered NATO to defend vital U.S. interests in Western and Central Europe, and it was on that basis that the Senate ratified the NATO Treaty in 1949.
Previous U.S. administrations pushed for expansion of NATO territory and mission, with disastrous results; but the Trump administration has adopted a different approach and needs to follow this approach with clarity, consistency, and determination. Any U.S. government has a constitutional right, and a duty to the American people, to declare that due to U.S. commitments and dangers elsewhere, it must reject taking on any extra burdens.
The state of the Ukraine war also illustrates a wider point that the United States and European governments should consider. The advent of nuclear weapons has ended direct war between the great powers, and long may that remain so. Instead, what we have seen is a range of proxy wars, and also actions by the great powers — like the EU threat to block Russia’s maritime trade — that would in the past have been considered acts of war, and would have led to war.
These actions could still do so. And at that point, all the Western and Russian commentators who claim that Russia and the West are “actually already being at war” would discover what actual war really means. So unfortunately would the rest of us.
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Benjamin Netanyahu Donald Trump at the White House in April 2025 (White House/Flickr)
Joining in Israel’s aggression against Iran would hurt, not advance, U.S. interests and international security.
This should not be surprising, given that support for U.S. interests and international security was not what led to Israel’s launching of the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to America and not just Israel, but the nuclear issue was not the main motivation behind Israel’s attack, as reflected in a target list that goes far beyond anything associated with Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel’s principal motivations for the war include ones peculiar to Israel and that the United States does not share, including the sabotaging of U.S. diplomacy with Iran. Another Israeli motivation is to distract the attention of not just the United States but the rest of the world from what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Some of the most blatant killing of famished residents of the Gaza Strip who were seeking food aid has occurred since the start of the Israeli offensive against Iran.
President Donald Trump’s public statements about Israel’s war have evolved quickly from apparent detachment to enthusiastic support, extending even to use of the first person “we” when claiming air superiority over Iran. As Charlie Stevenson of Johns Hopkins University observes, Trump evidently is experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) and seeks to claim credit for ending a purported Iranian nuclear threat.
What are either declared objectives (destroying Iran’s nuclear program) or widely assumed ones (regime change in Tehran) of the war are among the criteria according to which possible U.S. involvement in the war should be judged. But so are other consequences, as mentioned below.
The war, with or without U.S. involvement, will not make an Iranian nuclear weapon less likely and might make it more likely. War was not necessary to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon. The prewar judgment of U.S. intelligence was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Iran was willingly negotiating with the United States, with serious intent, to reach a new agreement that would preclude such a weapon.
By signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, and adhering to its terms until after Trump reneged on the agreement three years later, Iran demonstrated not only that a war is unnecessary but that a prohibition on all uranium enrichment is also unnecessary. The JCPOA closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon through carefully negotiated restrictions and enhanced international monitoring. It is impossible to reconcile this diplomatic record with any notion that Iran has been determined to acquire a nuke no matter what.
The damage that Israel has inflicted on Iranian nuclear facilities, even if the United States were to add to it by using 30,000-pound bombs to turn the underground enrichment facility at Fordow into a crater, sets back the Iranian nuclear program but does not kill it. Nor does it eliminate Iran’s ability to construct a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so. Centrifuge cascades can be reconstructed, and the relevant specialized knowledge in Iran is not limited to the scientists Israel has assassinated over the past week.
Iranian intentions are at least as important as Iranian capabilities. No event is more likely to lead Iranian policymakers to take the decision they had not so far taken — to build a nuclear weapon — than an armed attack on their country’s sovereign territory. Voices in Tehran arguing in favor of taking that step because Iran needs a deterrent against future attacks undoubtedly have grown stronger in the wake of the Israeli offensive. They will grow stronger still if the United States joins the Israeli war.
If Iran does make such a decision, the subsequent redirection of the Iranian nuclear program toward military purposes will take place outside the view of international inspectors. The Israeli attack already has derailed talks aimed at a new nuclear agreement — thereby accomplishing one of Netanyahu’s objectives — and a U.S. military intervention may kill indefinitely the prospects for future negotiations. The United States and other outside powers will be far less able to track what Iran is doing on the nuclear front than was the case under the intrusive inspection procedures of the JCPOA.
U.S. military involvement in Israel’s offensive carries a high risk of becoming an endless war. Trump may believe he can do a one-and-done, such as dropping bunker-busters on Fordow and then declaring mission accomplished, but this is unlikely to be the end of U.S. combat with Iran. The probable Iranian dispersion of nuclear facilities and materials, possibly following an Iranian decision to build a bomb clandestinely, will mean a prolonged search-and-destroy mission. It will become one more instance of Israel “mowing the lawn,” only this mowing will also involve the United States.
Trump will be under pressure to stay involved, from Israel and from domestic forces skeptical about whether he had solved the Iranian nuclear problem after all.
As for possible regime change, the first thing to remember is how miserable has been the U.S. record of regime change in the Middle East, when considering not only the change itself but subsequent events flowing from the change. A leading example is the offensive war that overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, an eight-year quagmire that caused thousands of American casualties and spawned a terrorist group that would take over large swaths of Syria as well as Iraq.
Another example is Libya, where U.S. backing of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi — who earlier had willingly, through negotiation, surrendered all his unconventional weapons programs as well as ending involvement in international terrorism — resulted in disorder that spread instability to the surrounding region and left Libya without a single stable government, a situation that continues to this day.
One can add to that list Iran itself, where a U.S.-supported coup in 1953 left Iran in the hands of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The shah’s rule ultimately proved to be weak as well as harsh, leading to the 1979 revolution that brought to power the Islamic Republic that governs Iran today.
The prospects for the current war in Iran, with or without U.S. involvement, to precipitate favorable regime change are dim. The Israeli assault has generated the usual rally-around-the-flag effect. Opposition voices inside Iran are distinguishing between the Iranian nation and the regime, with solidarity on behalf of the former taking immediate priority over discontent with the latter.
If any significant political change were to occur in response to the war, it would at least as likely to strengthen regime hardliners as in the opposite direction. A possibility is something akin to a military dictatorship, led by Revolutionary Guard officers displeased with what they perceive to be excessive softness by the current regime and perhaps in favor of the development of a nuclear deterrent.
The war is not a circumstance in which some moderate element waiting in the wings can create a Switzerland-on-the-Gulf.
Israel, with its proven entrée into opposition elements inside Iran, should be as much aware of this as anyone else. The Israeli government probably would be satisfied with a Libya-type situation of chaos and weakness. One of the last things the Netanyahu government would want to see emerge in Iran is a stable, moderate democracy that enjoys good relations with the United States. Such a development would overturn a centerpiece of Israeli foreign policy — Iran as a bête noire to which Israel constantly draws the world's attention, away from what Israel itself is doing, and which it can blame for the ills in the Middle East.
Beyond the lack of favorable results from U.S. involvement in the war regarding either the nuclear program or regime change, there are the other costs and consequences. Most directly, more people would die, including Americans. Iran certainly would strike back, both against installations that house 40,000 U.S. military personnel in the Middle East and perhaps also through clandestine operations elsewhere.
Regional instability would increase — partly by definition — in that U.S. involvement and the inevitable Iranian response would mean a wider war.
The nuclear dimension of regional instability also must be considered. To the extent Israel’s war is aimed at the ability of Iran to construct a nuclear weapon, the Israeli goal is not to keep nuclear weapons out of the Middle East but rather to maintain Israel’s own regional nuclear monopoly.
That monopoly is part of the background to the impunity with which Israel has become the most destructive actor in the Middle East, attacking more nations with its armed forces than any other state in the region. Direct U.S. involvement in Israel’s current war against Iran would constitute an endorsement and encouragement of that destabilizing behavior.
Instability elsewhere would also increase, by dealing yet another blow to the norm of non-aggression and international law that incorporates that norm. Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in brushing off international criticism of his own acts of aggression against Ukraine, so too would U.S. participation in yet another offensive war add to his rhetorical ammunition, and reduce any inhibitions of Russia, China, or any other aggression-minded powers.
The United States would become even less trusted than before as a negotiating partner, as many observers reach, rightly or wrongly, the same conclusion that many Iranians undoubtedly have reached — that the Trump administration’s apparent seeking of a negotiated nuclear agreement was a cover for an armed attack.
U.S. soft power would suffer another blow, through the ever-closer association of the United States in minds around the world not only with the aggression against Iran but with its client rogue state’s other destructive conduct.
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