Fars reported Monday that, according to the new Gallup Poll, “An overwhelming majority of Egyptians support replacing US economic aid with funds from Iran or Turkey.”
It said the poll showed that 82 percent of Egyptians oppose US economic aid to Egypt, up from 71 percent when the question was asked in December and 52 percent last April.
The Fars report doesn’t gives the figures for the proportion who want aid to come from Iran. That may be because the poll, released Monday, doesn’t mention Iran.
The Gallup website said a majority of Egyptians queried said for the first time that they opposed receiving aid from international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Asked about aid from other Arab governments, Gallup said a majority of Egyptians favored that kind of aid—but the proportion seeking Arab aid fell substantially from 71 percent last June to 57 percent now.
The Gallup report says nothing about questions on aid from Turkey or Iran. The website report doesn’t mention Iran, raising the question of how Fars can say that Gallup found “increasingly deep trust and admiration for Iran.”
A Zogby poll take last June showed plummeting respect for Iran across the Arab world.
President Ahmadi-nejad’s speeches condemning the West appeared to attract widespread affection for the Islamic Republic after his election. The favorability ratings that Arabs gave Iran in 2006, the second year of Ahmadi-nejad’s presidency, were very high, running around 80 percent.
But Zogby took polls in 2008, 2009 and 2011 showing a dramatic drop in positive views of Iran among Arabs. The drop began even before the 2009 post-election protests.
Many analysts said respect for Iran was high in part because Arabs saw that it has ended autocracy and built a democratic state, while most Arabs continued to live under autocratic regimes. The most common view has held that the 2009 protests and the regime’s forceful suppression of them portrayed the Islamic Republic as just another brutal state.
Zogby said Arabs are also concerned that Iran was seeking to dominate the region. He said his poll showed strong negative reactions to Iran’s expanding role in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, especially its vocal support for the largely Shia protests in Bahrain.
The poll surveyed 4,000 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE during June.
In the 2006 poll, Iran was viewed favorably by substantial majorities in all six of these countries. In 2008, smaller majorities in five of those six countries viewed Iran favorably, while Jordan had turned negative. In 2009, Morocco and Lebanon viewed Iran favorably while the other four had all turned negative. Last June, a majority viewed Iran favorably only in Lebanon while favorable views in the other five were ranged from 37 percent in Egypt down to just 6 percent in Saudi Arabia.
Zogby said, “Strong majorities in every country but Lebanon [are] saying that Iran threatens the peace and stability of the Arab world.”
Zogby asked Arabs if they had to choose one country in the region other than Israel to be a nuclear power, what country would they choose. Egypt was the overwhelming first choice. Iran came in dead last—in single digits—everywhere but Lebanon, where 69 percent of the Shia population chose Iran. In the UAE, not even a solitary person surveyed named Iran.
Zogby said, “Iran’s behavior is seen by Arab public opinion not as a counter to America’s hostile domination, but as a source of instability seeking to exploit troubled areas for its own gain. Add to this the Iranian regime’s brutal confrontation with the Green Revolution, and whatever positive characteristics frustrated and alienated Arabs may once have attributed to the regime in Tehran have now all but evaporated.”
While the poll reveals very negatives attitudes toward Iran, they showed even more negative views of the United States. The US was rated lowest in the favorability ratings in five of the six countries polled. Only in Saudi Arabia, was Iran rated lower than the United States.