06/10/09 – Kenneth Ballen – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And now on to our next guest.
I'm sorry, Ken, for keeping you on the line.
It's Ken Balin.
He's the president of Terror Free Tomorrow, the Center for Public Opinion.
Welcome to the show, sir.
How are you doing?
Good.
Very well.
And thank you for having me on.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And I saw this, first of all, at CNN.com commentary, Iranians favor peace deal with U.S. And then here I have the PDF file.
It's at terrorfreetomorrow.org, in cooperation with the New America Foundation, Steve Clemons Foundation there in D.C.
And this is about some pretty extensive surveying that you've done inside Iran.
So I guess, first of all, can you please tell us about the structure of the poll and how extensive it was and that kind of thing?
Well, the poll was quite extensive.
This is our third nationwide poll of Iran in the last two years.
The poll was conducted by telephone.
There is 90 percent phone penetration inside Iran.
That means 90 percent of the people have a landline.
So we're able to phone and get fairly extensive penetration and do a kind of survey as is done in the United States in terms of the methodology of the survey.
So does that mean people on foot walking around or that means telephone calls to how many people?
Telephone calls.
No.
Face-to-face surveys in Iran are very problematic because usually they're accompanied by government minors or some kind of censorship.
So it's not a preferred way to get honest answers.
Do you think that most people in Iran, if they get a telephone poll like that, would be not worried about the same thing, their call being listened to?
Well, most people are not.
I mean, the best way to assure you of that is by some of the answers that we got.
For instance, nearly 80 percent of the people said that they would like to vote in a direct election for the Supreme Leader, which is currently not their system.
That's not a government-sanctioned thing to say.
Certainly not.
Right?
Right, yeah.
80 percent were willing to say that for most questions.
I think if you ask them other kinds of questions, you might run into problems.
But we've been doing polling there long enough that we ask them what we feel they're comfortable with so they're going to get paranoid if the state police are on the other line.
All right.
Well, so I guess let's start with that one.
That's what I guess technically they call that a super-duper majority, willing to say that the Ayatollah Khomeini ought to be up for a referendum, huh?
That's right.
No, it's a pretty extraordinary finding when you think about it.
The other thing that's interesting on that one is people picked the economy as their top priority.
Ninety percent said that.
But almost as many people, 87 to 84 percent, so it's basically the same, picked ensuring free elections and a free press as their top priority.
So this is something, you know, Iranians are very focused on, and they really want a more democratic system.
They also want a better relationship with the United States too.
Well, let's talk about those numbers.
What sort of, well, I guess maybe a good question along those lines would be people who tend to be Ahmadinejad supporters and tend to be the kind of right-wing voters, what do they think?
Are they even being won over?
Because I guess most people understand about Iran, it's a very young society.
It is, and even I would say most or a very large percentage of Ahmadinejad supporters also want good relations with the United States.
They also want more democracy.
They also want free trade.
Yes, so they're very open to a better relationship with us.
This is from a public opinion point of view.
So it's not, you know, if he's reelected, and he might be, it's not on a mandate of isolating Iran and being belligerent to other countries.
But yet, I've got to say, Iranians see the United States and Israel as the only threat to them.
So they want a new relationship with the United States, but they expect the United States to have a new relationship with them.
That's the best way to phrase it.
Well, and, you know, I guess you say you've done polls like this before.
Did any of them happen to be in 2005, by any chance?
No, we started, there were none in 2005.
We started polling in Iran two years ago, in 2007.
Okay, because I don't know if you remember, but it was in the news all over the world that George Bush's speech to the Iranian people along the lines of, you guys better not vote for the right-wingers, encouraged them to do just that.
And Ahmadinejad's men were quoted laughing by the BBC saying, thanks a lot for helping us get reelected, or helping us get elected here at George Bush.
And I guess I wonder whether you think, you know, maybe Obama's at least stated new tack will kind of work the other way and help diminish support for the conservatives in favor of people who have a better chance of getting along on the so-called world stage of diplomacy and all that.
Right.
I don't know, because we didn't poll it.
So I just don't know.
Yeah.
Well, have you seen the change, how big of a change is there from this year's poll compared to a year or two ago?
There's really not much change on these issues.
The pretty consistent people want a better relationship with the United States.
You know, they're even willing to give up any kind of development of nuclear weapons and have guarantees in return for a normal relationship with the United States.
So the people want that.
They want to be able to have a non-antagonistic relationship with us.
That's why the headline of the CNN.com piece was, Because I think that's what the people think.
I wonder if you did a poll of Americans, what the numbers would say.
Have you seen any data on that?
No, I don't have any data.
I'm not aware of it.
You know, I don't know the answer to that.
By how much is Ahmadinejad favored to win?
You know, I don't know that he's going to win.
Our poll shows him ahead by a fairly sizable margin.
However, we also had a very large percentage of people that said they didn't know, and most of the people who don't know are probably more in the reform camp.
So I think the election is quite close, and it looks like it probably will go into a second round.
It's hard to tell.
Yeah, it says in your article here that it doesn't look like anybody's going to have a majority in the first round.
I don't think so.
I'd be surprised if that happens.
It's possible.
You know, it's important for your listeners to keep in mind, too, that since the founding of the Islamic Republic, no incumbent president has ever lost re-election.
So I think it's only prudent to consider that President Ahmadinejad is the favorite to win.
But he may not win it in the first round, which would be a very interesting result.
Well, you know, I guess it's really important kind of on the most basic level.
I don't mean to be, you know, insulting or whatever, but I guess probably most Americans, if you tell them Iran, they probably only picture a bunch of people yelling and burning a flag in the street or the ayatollah himself or Ahmadinejad ranting on about something.
And so it's really important that people understand.
Absolutely.
That's just really kind of myth-filled stereotypes, because really Iranians, most Iranians, think favorably of Americans.
Iranians, almost all Iranians, think favorably of Christians.
The percentage of Iranians who think favorably of Christians is significantly higher than the percentage of Americans who think favorably of Muslims.
So it's a very open and accepting society, and kind of this, you know, flamethrower stereotype is just that.
It's a misguided stereotype.
Well, and there are at least, what, tens of thousands of Jews that live in Iran as well, right?
That's right.
And that's right.
And most Iranians think favorably of Jews.
So while they disagree with the policies of Israel, they're able to distinguish between opposition to Israel, which is quite strong in Iran.
I mean, I don't want to sugarcoat that in any way.
Iranians do not favor a peace deal with Israel, but they think favorably of Jews.
So, and just like they're not favorable towards the United States and American policies, but they think favorably of Americans.
So they're able to distinguish between the people and the government and its policies.
Which is more than Americans usually can do.
Well, you know, I gave you one statistic which I think is accurate, is that Iranians, I think it's, I'll look if you want, but it's a very large margin.
I'll look while we're talking and get the exact numbers.
But Iranians think favorably of Christians.
And, you know, in very high numbers.
Well, let me tell you what it is, rather than saying very high numbers.
Go ahead and look that up, and I'll do a little soliloquy of my own here, which is about this Gallup poll that came out in the great book, What Do Muslims Really Think, I think is the title of it.
And they did extensive surveying throughout the Middle East.
And this is really far beyond my most wild optimism.
Across the Middle East, across the so-called Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, they all distinguish between the American government and the American people.
And I think that that is really exceptional, for one reason, because that's certainly not the way the American people think, trying to differentiate between who's who over there.
And secondly, because our government, all the time, as we're bombing them, says we're a democracy, we're a democracy, we're a democracy.
And what our government is doing is what our people want it to do, and trying to diffuse their responsibility onto us, and yet the people of the Muslim world still don't buy it.
Well, I can't comment on that, because I just don't know.
I'll give you this, Bill.
Only 11% of Iranians think unfavorably of Christians.
The last poll I saw in the United States that measured this wasn't our poll, but of unfavorable views of Muslims, it was about three times as high as that.
It shows you that people can draw, your listeners can draw their own conclusions, but only 11% of Iranians think unfavorably of Christians.
The number is higher with Jews.
It's 32% have an unfavorable view.
And I think that's about the percentage here in the United States of Americans who have an unfavorable view of Muslims.
For what it's worth, I don't know what it means, but it shows a population over there that is fairly accepting of outsiders.
I wonder how much of that can be chalked up to press coverage, because I guess in Iran, even though they don't have a First Amendment like we have or whatever, they really have a lot of exposure to international media over their satellite dishes and so forth.
Americans never see Iranians on TV, really, not in their own country.
Yeah, well, but the penetration of the satellite and how many people get their news from that, most Iranians do not, so I don't know how great an influence that really has.
I don't know, it may just be they're more accepting.
All right, well, listen, I really appreciate your time on the show today, and I appreciate your efforts in this research.
This is very interesting stuff.
Thank you, my pleasure.
Important truths I hope Americans can understand in greater measure.
Thank you again, I appreciate it.
Thank you, and that is everybody, Ken Balin, president of Terror Free Tomorrow, the Center for Public Opinion, and you can find the links, I believe, on the front page of the New America Foundation at newamerica.net, and again, the article at cnn.com is called Commentary, Iranians Favor Peace Deal with the U.S., and I think it's terrorfreetomorrow.org, and we'll be right back after this.