The Peninsula

The Middle East War Starts and Ends With Iran’s Nuclear Program

Negotiations between the United States and Iran to end the war were expected to resume over the past weekend. After the first round of talks, held last weekend under Pakistan’s mediation, broke down, the United States began a counter-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to cut off Iran’s oil exports—its major source of revenue. In response, Iran reacted strongly but has not abandoned continuing negotiations with the United States.

Against this backdrop, it is necessary to examine American public opinion on the war with Iran. According to a joint Economist/YouGov poll released on April 14, only 32 percent of American adults support the war, while 55 percent oppose it. However, there is a significant divide along party lines: 69 percent of Republicans (83 percent of self-identified “MAGA” Republicans) support the war, compared to 7 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of independents, indicating sharply polarized public opinion.

A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted around the same time found that Americans consider several priorities regarding Iran: keeping the Strait of Hormuz and access to oil open (87 percent), ensuring the safety and freedom of the Iranian people (81 percent), deterring Iran from threatening other countries (76 percent), and permanently halting Iran’s nuclear program (76 percent). However, a majority of respondents believe that these goals have not yet been achieved.

This public sentiment is creating political pressure on the Donald Trump administration and the Republican Party to secure a swift end to the war and declare “victory” ahead of the November midterm elections. At the center of the ongoing negotiations is Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump has repeatedly emphasized that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and it is reported that the U.S. negotiating team, led by Vice President JD Vance, has demanded that Iran halt uranium enrichment for twenty years and export its highly enriched uranium abroad. In response, Iran proposed reducing the suspension period to five years and suggested diluting uranium instead of exporting it. This gap led to the collapse of the first round of talks, and how this gap is bridged in future negotiations will be a key issue.

Any war inevitably claims innocent lives, making it difficult to avoid controversy. Moreover, the current war with Iran has triggered shocks to global energy, industrial raw materials, and food supply chains, resulting in significant collateral damage around the world. Despite that, it is difficult to deny that Iran’s nuclear program lies at both the beginning and end of the conflict, and this has important implications for both South and North Korea, which have endured decades of conflict and confrontation over the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The nuclear issues of North Korea and Iran are fundamentally similar in that both are major U.S. national security concerns and run counter to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. However, the United States’ decision not to carry out a surgical military strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities in 1994, while fortunately averting war on the Korean Peninsula, ultimately led North Korea to emerge as a de facto nuclear-armed state. That precedent may have fueled both anxiety and a sense of urgency over the need to effectively curb Iran’s nuclear development, particularly amid growing pessimism about North Korean denuclearization—possibly serving as an underlying factor that triggered the war. In this context, although South Korea has suffered considerable collateral damage from the Iran war, it is necessary for the country to approach the conflict and Iran’s nuclear issue with a more measured response and broader perspective, as it steadfastly continues to seek North Korea’s denuclearization.

This article was originally published in Korean in the Hankook Ilbo on April 18.

Ellen Kim is Director of Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI). The views expressed are the author’s alone.

Feature image is from Shutterstock.

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