Arabs less worried about Iran, poll finds

US and Israeli hopes of forging a Sunni Arab alliance to contain Iran and its regional allies may be misplaced, at least at the popular level, according to a major survey of six Arab countries released on Feb. 6. The face-to-face survey of a total of 3,850 respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates found that close to 80 percent of Arabs consider Israel and the United States the two biggest external threats to their security. Only six percent cited Iran. And less than one in four Arabs believe Iran should be pressured to halt its nuclear program, while 61 percent, including majorities in all six countries, said Tehran had the right to pursue it even if, as most believe, the program is designed to develop nuclear weapons. The poll, the fifth in an annual series conducted by Zogby International and designed by Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, was carried out in November and early December–after last summer's war between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel, but just before the controversial execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The latter event has widened the divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims throughout the region, according to some reports, and played into recent efforts by the US to forge a de facto alliance between Israel and Sunni-led Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms, to contain what they see as growing Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. But Telhami, who will present his findings at a major Brookings-sponsored conference of Islamic leaders in Doha next week, said he doubts these sectarian tensions are changing basic attitudes among the general public on key regional issues in the countries covered in the survey, with the exception of Lebanon. "The public of the Arab world is not looking at the important issues through the Sunni-Shia divide," he said. "They see them rather through the lens of Israeli-Palestinian issues and anger with US policy [in the region]. Most Sunni Arabs take the side of the Shias on the important issues." Indeed, the survey strongly suggests that the US, whose image in the Arab world has fallen to an all-time low over the past year according to this and other recent polling, faces a steep uphill battle in rallying Arab public opinion behind it on critical regional questions. More than three out of four of all respondents described their attitudes towards Washington as either "somewhat" (21 percent) or "very" (57 percent) unfavorable. Negative feelings were strongest in the three monarchies: Jordan, where 90 percent of respondents described their views as unfavorable, Morocco (87 percent) and Saudi Arabia (82 percent). As in the past several years, large majorities of Arabs attribute less benign objectives to US policy in the region, including "controlling oil" (75 percent, "protecting Israel"; 69 percent "weakening the Muslim World"; and 68 percent, "the desire to dominate the region." Only nine percent of the weighted aggregates believed one of Washington's main objectives was promoting democracy. Majorities, ranging from 51 percent in Lebanon to 68 percent in Jordan and 77 percent in Morocco, believe Iran has the right to pursue its nuclear program.