Do Americans support the option of war against Iran?

Mohamed Minshawi-Washington

US talks with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on ways to respond to the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities have been accompanied by growing US public rejection and congressional rejection of military action against Iran.

Although US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described during a Gulf tour the attack on Saudi Aramco facilities as "an act of war," President Donald Trump expressed hesitation during his visit to California, saying that war is the final option in dealing with Iran and there are many other options before resorting to it.

A poll conducted by Business Insider on a sample of 1,142 US citizens on September 17 and 18 showed that only 13 percent support attacks on Iran.

The poll offered six alternatives to respondents to the question "What position should the United States take to respond to attacks on Saudi oil facilities?".

The answers were as follows:

- Six percent of Americans believe that Washington should play a limited military role in coordination with the Saudi ally, including air strikes and bombardments, without using any ground forces.

7% of Americans believe that Saudi Arabia should be fully supported militarily in every possible way.

- 25% of Americans chose to keep their country away from the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and leave Saudi Arabia alone to respond to Iran.

- 25% of Americans expressed the need for Washington to condemn the attacks on Saudi oil installations, and to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on the responsible party without the need for military action.

• Sixteen percent of Americans agreed that intelligence, information and weapons support should be provided only to Saudi Arabia, and 22 percent of respondents could not determine how Washington should respond.

Powers of declaring war
The publication of the poll numbers coincided with growing opposition in Congress to any military action against Iran.

The US Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war, but a hastily passed law following the September 11, 2001 attacks gave the US president the right to make decisions regarding the use of armed forces in external conflicts without the need to declare war.

This law was based on Republican President George W. Bush in the decisions on the war on Afghanistan and Iraq, and also based on Democratic President Barack Obama in military action against Libya, and finally President Trump in military strikes against targets in Syria.

The United States has not formally declared war since World War II, when Congress backed the declaration of war against Germany and Japan.

But Jawdat Bahjat, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University in Washington, said in a response to a question by Al Jazeera Net that "the role of Congress in the current crisis between Tehran and Washington is very small."

"Congress has a big role in any confrontation with Iran," said Alex Fatinka, a researcher on Iran at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

"If there is a long-term policy toward Iran, this can only happen with congressional approval, but for short-term policies such as limited military attacks, Trump can do so without returning to Congress."

In an interview with CNN, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, stressed the need to return to Congress if Trump wants to "be the policeman of the region and use our military to protect Saudi Arabia or the countries of the region."

"We don't have a security agreement or a relationship like the one that binds NATO countries. Even if we think of a limited strike against Iranian interests, we have to think about the next step, because it might respond, or through proxies," he said.

In the same vein, the New York Times came out with an article by the famous writer Nicholas Christophe entitled "We are not Saudi mercenaries", which rejects any logic to support the idea of ​​military action against Iran.

Bruce Riedel, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and a former CIA official, said Washington should use the Aramco incident to "earnestly call for an immediate ceasefire in Yemen and withdraw all foreign forces from there, while freezing US military support." To Saudi Arabia to comply with the ceasefire and withdraw from Yemen. "