The National Iranian American Council president Jamal Abdi said the poll is important to give Iranians and Iranian-Americans a voice.
A new poll weighing how Iranians feel about Epic Fury found nearly an equal split with 49.3 percent opposing military action against Iran and 48.9 percent supporting it.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) commissioned Zogby Analytics to survey 505 Iranian-Americans between Feb. 27 and March 5 and found that among the 49.3 percent who oppose U.S. military action, the top reason cited is that innocent civilians might be killed or injured.
That’s compared to the 67.4 percent who say they support the conflict because they believe it will undermine the Iranian government and make regime change more likely.
NIAC president Jamal Abdi said the poll is important because it gives Iranian-Americans a voice.
“We need to be politically active,” Abdi said during a March 11 news conference announcing the poll’s results. “We're not going to get in trouble for making our voices heard. If we don't have a seat at the table, we're on the menu.”
President Donald Trump pre-emptively struck Iran on Feb. 28, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli Defense Forces.
The U.S. initiative is called Operation Epic Fury and the Israeli mission has been named Operation Rising Lion.
Since Feb. 28, U.S.-Israeli strikes have sunk some 60 Iranian ships, struck more than 5,500 targets, leveled drone factories, neutralized 80 percent of Iran's missile launchers, and hit a large ballistic missile manufacturing facility.
The poll further found that 35.5 percent felt that engaging in diplomacy to stop the war and reduce tensions is the best way to support the Iranian people, compared to 34.5 percent who prefer pursuing regime change.
Advocating for regime change, according to Abdi, is not necessarily an endorsement of war or opposition to diplomacy because many believe that Iran can realize its own destiny of internal and organic regime change through diplomacy and the lifting of sanctions.
“The factors that are necessary for that include a strong middle class, a powerful civil society, which are things that have been robbed from Iranians, not just from the internal repression, but from outside sanctions,” Abdi added.
The stated goals of Epic Fury include destroying the Iranian regime's ballistic missiles, annihilating the regime's navy, ensuring Iran's regional terrorist proxies can not destabilize the region or the free world, and guaranteeing that the current regime can never obtain a nuclear weapon.
Earlier this week, Trump told House Republicans that the war with Iran would be over soon.
"We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil," the president said on March 9. "I think you'll see it is going to be a short-term excursion."
https://www.ntd.com/iranian-americans-weigh-in-on-epic-fury-strikes_1131654.html