More than three-quarters (77%) of Evangelical Christians believe that if the Iranian regime were able to build a nuclear weapon, its leaders would use it to carry out their repeated threats to “wipe Israel off the map” and “bring about a second Holocaust,” according to a new survey published by the Joshua Fund.
The poll was conducted by McLaughlin & Associates between March 17 and 22 and asked questions of 1,000 American adults. The Joshua Fund is a non-profit organization founded by Joel and Lynn Rosenberg to “mobilize Christians to bless Israel.”
In general, two out of three Americans (67.6%) said they believe that Iran would use a nuclear weapon against Israel, while only 12.5% said that they did not believe a nuclear Iran posed a threat to the Jewish state. Nearly 20% of Americans said they did not know.
When broken down by religion, nearly half (49.7%) of atheists said they believe Iran wants to destroy Israel with a nuclear weapon, 59.3% of agnostics, 40% of self-identified “secular” Americans, 80% of Jews, 71.2% of Catholics and 74.9% of Protestants, compared to the 77.1% of Evangelicals.
The survey also asked how respondents feel about the Iranian nuclear deal in general.
The question was, “Do you believe that the new nuclear deal that the international community is negotiating with the leaders of Iran will make the world safer or more dangerous?”
The majority of Protestants and Evangelicals, and close to half of all Americans, said that the deal “will make the world more dangerous by lifting economic sanctions, giving Iran’s government enormous oil revenues, and making it easier for Iran to fund – and hide – its efforts to build nuclear weapons.”
Less than one-third (31.3%) of respondents said they believe the deal will make the world safer by preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons.
When broken down by religion: 24.2% of atheists believe the deal will make the world more dangerous, 47.8% of agnostics, 12.1% of self-identified “secular” Americans, 41.3% of Jews, 48.7% of Catholics, 51.9% of Protestants and 55.3% of Evangelical born-again Christians.
When examined according to political affiliation, there is a big gap between Republicans and Democrats. Some 67.6% of Republicans versus 28.2% of Democrats believe the Iran deal is dangerous. Similarly, 65.9% of people who voted for Trump in 2020 say the deal is dangerous, compared to 30.5% of Americans who voted for Biden.
Joel Rosenberg, who is also the editor of ALL ISRAEL NEWS and who first published the survey results, said that these questions were meant to “measure Americans’ confidence in US and international diplomatic efforts to prevent the Iranian regime from building nuclear weapons” and to “measure what Americans think the Iranian regime will do with nuclear weapons.”
Source » jpost