By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - Some 65% of Americans believe U.S. President Donald Trump will order troops into a large-scale ground war in Iran but only 7% support the idea, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Thursday.
The three-day poll showed Trump's broader standing with the public holding largely unchanged at 40%, up 1 percentage point from a Reuters/Ipsos poll carried out in the hours after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. The poll, which gathered
respondents from 1,545 U.S. adults nationwide, had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
The Trump administration has mulled deploying thousands of U.S. troops to reinforce its operation in the Middle East, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The possible deployments could use air and naval forces to secure safe passage for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, or could involve deploying U.S. troops to Iran's shoreline. The Trump administration has also discussed options to send ground forces to Iran's Kharg Island, the hub for 90% of Iran's oil exports, Reuters reported.
Trump's Republicans largely support the war as it has played out so far, with 77% saying they approve of U.S. strikes on Iran, compared with 6% of Democrats and 28% of independents.
Some 37% of Americans overall approve of the war, the poll found. Fifty-nine percent disapprove, including about one in five Republicans.
Some 63% of Republicans - and 34% of Americans overall - said they would support deploying a small number of special forces troops to Iran. Fifty-five percent of respondents in the poll said they opposed deploying any ground troops, whether the scale of operations be large or small.
(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
