Sharon Zhang
Truthout / August 7, 2024
The US has been positioning its military assets around the Middle East as Israel continues to stoke tensions.
As the threat of further escalation of tensions looms in the Middle East after months of Israel’s widespread aggression in the region, new polling finds that the majority of Americans prefer that the U.S. refrain from sending troops to fight on behalf of Israel.
Polling released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 55 percent of Americans oppose the use of U.S. troops if Israel came under attack from its neighbors, while a similar number (56 percent) also oppose it if Israel was attacked by Iran specifically. Only 41 percent of Americans say they want U.S. troops to be sent to support Israel — a 14 point gap from those opposing U.S. involvement.
Democrats and independents are most strongly opposed to the use of U.S. troops to aid Israel, with only 35 percent of both independents and Democrats saying they would favor such an idea.
This is the highest proportion of Americans saying they oppose sending troops to help Israel since the group began surveying on this question in 2010. It represents a significant jump since 2021, the last time this question was asked: in 2021, the results were flipped, with 53 percent saying they would support backing Israel with U.S. troops. Support has also dipped significantly among Republicans – from 71 percent favoring the proposal in 2021, down to 55 percent in the latest survey.
The poll results, in combination with other polling results from recent months, suggest that Israel’s genocide of Gaza has soured the U.S. public on its military operations. It shows that the public is opposed to U.S. officials continuing to dig down in their support of Israel to the extent that U.S. troops become openly and directly involved in the conflict on behalf of Israel in case it escalates further.
Haniyeh was killed just hours after Israel bombed a suburb in Beirut in an escalation of tensions.
The poll was released at a crucial time when Israel has been openly stoking war with Iran and allied forces opposed to Israel’s genocide.
In recent weeks, Israel carried out two attacks representing major escalations of tensions: a strike in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, on a Hezbollah official, and a bombing killing Hamas’s top political leader in Tehran, Iran’s capital. These strikes have been building for months, and experts noted they were aimed at showing enemies that Israel was capable of and willing to target its enemies anywhere across the Middle East.
Iran has vowed to retaliate, and the U.S. has said it is anticipating attacks soon. Egyptian officials said on Wednesday that it has told Egyptian airlines to avoid Iranian airspace early Thursday morning, which could be an indication of pending military activity.
It’s unclear what these attacks may look like; Iran’s retaliation against Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April, in which Iranian forces launched a series of drones, did not result in any casualties aside from one injury of a child in Israel.
Israel, meanwhile, has vowed that anyone who retaliates against them will pay “a very heavy price.”
While the U.S. has publicly said that it opposes a war, it has also moved multiple military assets to the Middle East and Europe so that they can be ready to support Israel. Some war hawks in Congress have already called for war with Iran because of Israel’s recent attacks, with some U.S. politicians seemingly always ready to stoke tensions with Iran at every turn.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor
