As Congress exhausts its 60-day review process of the Iran nuclear arms deal, a majority of Americans want the House and Senate to reject President Obama’s championed agreement.
A CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday indicates that 52 percent of American adults want Congress to reject the agreement with Iran, which would lift international sanctions on the country while allowing it to press on with crucial elements of its nuclear work, research, and development.
Only 44 percent of Americans said they want congressional lawmakers to approve the deal.
Independents and Republicans are much more likely than their Democratic counterparts to call for such a result from Congress, as strong majorities of both would prefer that lawmakers reject the deal. In contrast, 61 percent of Democrats want Congress to approve the deal, which was finalized in Vienna on July 14.
The results of the poll, conducted between July 22 and 25, come just as congressional lawmakers worry that the United States and fellow world powers that brokered the agreement will never address all suspicions regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
An Obama administration report delivered to Capitol Hill last week suggested that Iran would never admit to having a covert nuclear weapons program, and that such an admission is not necessary to ensure the country does not continue to pursue an atomic weapon under the finalized nuclear arms agreement.
Despite the push by many lawmakers and the majority of Americans for Congress to reject the nuclear agreement, President Obama has said that he will veto any efforts by Congress to reject the deal.
But the American people’s distrust of Iran is nothing new.
Ahead of the announcement regarding the finalized deal earlier this month, a poll conducted by Monmouth University showed that a majority of U.S. adults would not trust Iran at all to obey an agreement that would scale back the country’s nuclear program and grant independent inspections of its facilities.