The U.S. strikes against Iran on Saturday provoked a wide array of responses. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration made no effort to seek congressional authorization for the attacks on nuclear sites, but Republican leaders in the House and Senate were quick to endorse the effort. Unsurprisingly, leading Democrats overwhelmingly responded negatively.
Israel celebrated the U.S. entry into the war, Russia and China condemned the attackand Iran vowed to retaliate. On Monday, Iran did so by launching missiles at the largest U.S. military site in the Middle East: the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where around 10,000 troops are stationed. Qatar said that its air defenses intercepted the missiles, and there were no reports of casualties.
In the days before the U.S. strikes, researchers from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project at the College of William & Mary’s Global Research Institute and the University of Georgia surveyed international relations (IR) scholars at U.S. colleges and universities on their views about the Israel-Iran conflict and the implications of the United States joining the war.
The results we report below are based on the responses of 753 experts surveyed between June 18 and June 22. (Read the full report to see the top-line results for all the questions.)
The IR experts who we surveyed generally believe that U.S. military action in Iran will harm U.S. national security, provoke Iranian retaliation, and, in the long run, reduce domestic political support for Trump. These scholars correctly predicted that Iran would not back down, but they oppose direct military action in that scenario. At the same time, most respondents believe that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon and that the country should not possess nuclear weapons.
Does This Conflict Make the United States Less Secure?
IR experts worry about the security implications of the conflict with Iran for the United States. Nearly two-thirds of experts said that Israel’s attacks on Iranian targets, which began on June 13, made the United States less secure, while only 9 percent believe that the attacks had made the United States more secure. Around one-quarter of respondents said the strikes had not affected U.S. security.
We also asked about the effects of U.S. strikes on Iran, which at the time that the survey began were hypothetical. The response was decisive: The overwhelming majority of the polled IR experts (83 percent) said that such military action would make the United States less secure.
Furthermore, we asked respondents about the likelihood of different retaliatory actions from Iran. They estimated that likelihood on a scale from 0 (indicating that Iran would definitely not take the action in question) to 100 (indicating that Iran would definitely take the action).
The respondents judged on average that there was a 35 percent chance that Iran would respond to U.S. strikes by targeting other countries in the region, a 50 percent chance that it would launch terrorist attacks against U.S. civilians around the world, a 63 percent chance that it would launch attacks against U.S. military forces in the Middle East, a 66 percent chance that it would try to disrupt maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and a 68 percent chance that it would initiate cyberattacks against the United States.
Iran validated these predictions by launching missiles against U.S. military forces in Qatar on Monday. Also consistent with our respondents’ predictions, over the weekend Iran’s parliament endorsed closing the Strait of Hormuz. The United States and potentially other actors would likely meet any effort to limit traffic in the strait with military force.
We asked respondents how China and Russia might respond to U.S. military action against Iran. Majorities judged that Russia was likely to increase military aid to Iran (63 percent) and initiate cyberattacks against the United States (52 percent). However, the experts felt that Russia was less likely to impose new economic sanctions, increase humanitarian aid to Iran, or initiate military operations against U.S. forces.
The IR experts predicted that China would be less likely than Russia to retaliate against a U.S. strike in Iran. The only response that a majority of our respondents anticipated from China in this scenario was humanitarian assistance to Iran (53.5 percent).
What Should the United States Do?
We launched our survey just after Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. We also asked respondents about what the United States would or should do if Iran failed to yield to U.S. demands. The experts said resoundingly that the United States should not attack: Only 12 percent were willing to endorse U.S. military action, while an overwhelming 83 percent opposed the use of military force.
Asked whether the United States would use force if Iran failed to comply with Trump’s ultimatum, about half of IR experts said they did not know. Approximately 20 percent said that the Trump administration would not use force, while roughly one-third predicted that it would.
We asked the experts how the United States should instead respond if Iran refused to yield, providing a list of possible actions that the United States could take against Iran. Half of respondents received a version of the question premised on a world in which Iran refused Trump’s ultimatum, while the other half were simply asked whether they supported the United States taking such actions “in the next 30 days.”
The experts were largely united in their opposition to the direct use of military force. Averaging over both versions of the question, only 16 percent of respondents supported U.S. strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, and 48 percent favored intercepting Iranian missiles bound for Israel. In the version of the question in which Iran refused to comply, 36 percent of respondents supported cyberattacks and 54 percent supported sanctions.
There was almost no support, however, for U.S. ground forces operating in Iran, strikes on targets beyond Iran’s nuclear program, or U.S. pursuit of regime change in Iran.
What Comes Next?
The IR experts believe that the U.S. strikes will have negative consequences for U.S. security. But our respondents are split on whether Trump will benefit in domestic political terms. Asked whether the president’s approval rating would be higher or lower one week after a hypothetical strike on Iran, around 42 percent of our respondents said it would be higher, 38 percent said it would be lower, and around 20 percent said it would remain about the same.
Still, they do not believe that any rally-around-the-flag effect will last. In the long run, our respondents anticipated that there would be political costs for the U.S. president if he used military force against Iran. Just 3.5 percent of respondents said that Trump’s approval rating would be higher one year after an attack on Iran, while 68 percent said that it would be lower. (Around 28 percent judged that his approval rating would be unchanged after a year.)
These predictions are consistent with decades of research on the public opinion effects of the use of military force, but it may also be because our respondents also believe that war is unlikely to bring regime change in Iran. When asked how likely it is that the current government in Tehran would still hold power one year from today, on average respondents gave the Iranian leadership a 67 percent chance.
The United States and Israel have demanded that Iran surrender its nuclear capabilities. We sought our respondents’ views on whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, whether Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, and the security implications of Iran having such a capability.
Foreign-policy experts, pundits, and politicians have long warned of the dangers of Iranian nuclear weapons capability. Most of our surveyed experts (59 percent) said no when asked whether Iran should “be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.” Only 18 percent said that Iran should be allowed to have a nuclear capability. Around one-quarter of our respondents were undecided.
Meanwhile, IR experts and others also have long debated just what Iran’s nuclear capabilities are, so we asked our respondents their thoughts on this question. Just over half (54 percent) said that they believed Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon prior to Israel’s air campaign. The others were evenly split between those who thought Iran wasn’t (22 percent) and those who said that they don’t know (24 percent).
IR experts and others also have long debated the security implications of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability. We asked our experts about the potential effects of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Most of our respondents anticipated that nuclear weapons would make Iran more secure (64 percent)—but make Israel (84 percent), the United States (54 percent), the Middle East (74 percent), and the world as a whole (65 percent) less secure.
Many observers fear that the conflict with Iran will escalate to a broader war, potentially involving the use of nuclear weapons. We asked our respondents about likely U.S. engagement in the Iran-Israel conflict. When asked to estimate the likelihood, on a 0 to 100 scale, that U.S. military forces would become directly involved in the conflict within the next year, experts on average predicted a 54 percent chance.
But the IR experts viewed the likelihood of a more intensive U.S. military escalation, specifically the use of ground forces in Iran, as substantially lower, with a mean response of just 18 percent.
The IR experts we surveyed view the likelihood of nuclear escalation as low but possible. When asked about the chance that Israel would threaten to use nuclear weapons against Iran within the next year, respondents estimated on average a 33 percent chance. (This would require that Israel publicly acknowledge that it has a nuclear weapon.) The foreign-policy experts gave an 11 percent chance that Israel would use its nuclear weapons.
IR experts correctly assessed the security challenges of the current Israel-Iran conflict, understanding that Iran would not back down in the face of the U.S. demand to abandon its nuclear aspirations. Respondents believe both that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and that it should not be allowed to have one—but U.S. military action, they said, is not the best means to ensure a non-nuclear Iran. And in the experts’ view, it serves neither U.S. security interests nor Trump’s domestic political fortunes.
