April 19, 2019
A new poll has come up with the surprising result that one-third of Iranians would like their government to have ties with Israel—a state the Islamic Republic insists has no right whatsoever to exist.
The poll was commissioned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which regularly hires pollsters in foreign countries to conduct polls to determine Israel’s standing in world opinion. They are carried out by professional pollsters in each country, and respondents are not informed that the polls were initiated by Israel.
Polls conducted in Arab countries at the end of 2018 asked to what extent respondents wanted their countries to have ties with Israel. Closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia have been the subject of much discussion, but the poll found only 23 percent of Arab respondents supported the idea of increased ties between the two nations.
However, 34 percent of Iranians said they were in favor of ties with Israel, as did 43 percent of Iraqis, the largest bloc of support.
When asked Iran’s nuclear program, 34 percent of Western Europeans said they believed that Iran was still developing nuclear weapons. Only 18 percent of respondents in Western Europe believed that Iran was no longer developing nuclear weapons.
The numbers for North America were almost identical, with 18 percent saying they believed Iran was no longer developing nuclear weapons and 33 percent saying they did not believe it had stopped.
Middle Eastern respondents were the most skeptical, with 43 percent of Arabs saying they did not believe Iran had stopped work on nuclear weapons.