Iranian Public Opinion, One Year After the Nuclear Deal
2016
On July 14, 2015, the United States, Iran, and five other world powers announced that they had
agreed on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to resolve international concerns
about Iran’s nuclear program. In return for Iran strengthening its commitments never to pursue
nuclear weapons, sharply limiting its dual-use capabilities, and allowing greater international
scrutiny of its nuclear program, the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and
the United States agreed to lift nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.
Both the nuclear deal and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani were immensely popular in Iran
right after the JCPOA was announced, in part because the public thought that the terms were
more generous toward Iran than they actually were, and because people had high expectations
about economic and political benefits. Reactions in the United States were much more mixed. A
smaller majority of the American public supported the deal, but critics in Congress came close to
blocking its implementation because they worried about what Iran would do if it received a
windfall from sanctions relief and hoped that tightening sanctions further could convince Iran to
give up all dual-use nuclear capabilities.
It’s appropriate to assess how Iranian public opinion has changed in the year since the deal was
signed and the six months since sanctions relief began to be implemented, given that U.S. and
European leaders frequently assert that Rouhani was elected with a mandate to improve Iran’s
economy by using nuclear diplomacy to get sanctions relief. Comparing shifts in Iranian public
opinion over time also offers a way to test some of the predictions made by congressional critics,
including that there would be a crack-down on human rights in Iran to appease the opponents of
increased engagement with the West, or that giving the Iranian public only a small taste of the
economic and political benefits that could flow from becoming a “normal” country would
increase pressure for more sweeping changes to Iran’s domestic and foreign policies.
This survey of Iranian public opinion is the sixth in a series conducted during and after the
negotiations that produced the JCPOA by the Center for International and Security Studies at
Maryland in collaboration with the Program on Public Consultation and Iranpoll.com. Some of
the same questions have been asked consistently since July 2014, when negotiations had been
underway for many months, but the two sides remained far apart on some important issues.
Some were reworded to reflect important contextual changes, such as public understanding about
the main elements of the JCPOA and the Iranian parliamentary elections earlier this year. Some
new questions have been added to find out what the Iranian public thinks about issues that have
become particularly salient in recent months, such as the extent to which those who have not yet
seen any economic benefits from the JCPOA hold Rouhani responsible or blame factors beyond
his control. The previous reports in this series, a set of assessments about American attitudes
towards nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and a collection of related articles are available at:
http://www.cissm.umd.edu/projects/security-cooperation-iran-challenges-and-opportunities.
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