East finds that a majority characterizes only Iran as an “enemy.” The survey, taken last month of 3,084 Americans by the Lou Harris Poll, found that a majority of Americans had primarily negative views of the US relationship with every country queried about except Israel. But a majority—and a large majority at that—categorized only a single country as an enemy; 71 percent rated Iran that way. Two other countries were rated as enemies by more than 40 percent—Iraq at 42 percent and Afghanistan at 45 percent. That suggested some confusion in American minds with large numbers of people calling a country an “enemy” because American troops were fighting there, even though those troops are supporting the governments of those two countries. The poll asked participants to rate the 13 Middle Eastern countries as a close ally, friendly, unfriendly, or an enemy. For Iran, 1 percent rated it an ally and 5 percent ruled it friendly. But 23 percent found Iran to be unfriendly and 71 percent rated it an enemy. The least liked country after Iran was Libya—and barely half as many people rated it as an enemy—39 percent. Combining the two negative ratings and two positive ratings shows that only Israel is viewed positively, although only a very modest majority—51-49 percent— was negative toward Egypt. Here are the combined positive and negative ratings for all 13 countries. The last column breaks out the subset of the negatives rating a country to be an “enemy.” Country Pos Neg Enemy Israel 69 31 8 Egypt 49 51 7 Kuwait 45 55 17 Turkey 44 56 10 S.Arabia 39 61 19 Jordan 38 62 12 Iraq 23 78 42 Pakistan 21 79 32 Lebanon 20 80 24 Afghan, 18 82 45 Syria 14 86 34 Libya 14 86 39 Iran 6 94 71 The poll shows that only a small segment (7-12 percent) rated the top six countries as enemies, while a large minority (24-45 percent) rated each of the next six countries as enemies. But only one country (Iran) was found to be an enemy by an actual majority.
