Fox News Poll: 68 percent say Obama not tough enough on Iran

Dec. 7, 2013: President Barack Obama smiles as he arrives at the Saban Forum to speak about the Middle East at the Willard Hotel in Washington. (AP)

While many American voters are uncertain about the tentative deal the United States and its allies recently struck with Iran over that nation’s nuclear program, they overwhelmingly agree that Iran shouldn’t be trusted.

In addition, it remains the consensus that President Obama has not been tough enough on Iran, according to a new Fox News poll.

Click here for the poll results.

More than two-thirds of voters -- 68 percent -- think Obama has not been tough enough on Iran, while five percent say he’s been too tough and 12 percent volunteer “about right.”

Majorities of Democrats (54 percent), independents (59 percent) and Republicans (88 percent) say the president has been too easy on the Iranian regime.

Current views are mostly unchanged from 2009, the last time this question was asked on a Fox News poll. During Obama’s first year in office, 69 percent of voters said he wasn’t tough enough on Iran, six percent said too tough and 16 percent about right (September 2009).

Meanwhile, a large 84-percent majority of voters says Iran cannot be trusted on the issue of nuclear weapons.

The new poll finds nearly twice as many voters disapprove (30 percent) as approve (16 percent) of the agreement the U.S. and its allies made with Iran in Geneva last month. At the same time more than half say they don’t know enough about it to have an opinion (54 percent). The agreement has yet to be finalized.

Republicans (49 percent) are about four times as likely as Democrats (12 percent) to disapprove of the deal with Iran.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,027 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from December 14-16, 2013. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.