Most U.S. adults say killing Soleimani made America less safe, new poll shows

Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Most Americans say the U.S. killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani has made the United States less safe, a USA Today/Ipsos poll released Thursday indicates.

More than six in 10 people surveyed said the attack made it more likely there would be terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland and that the United States and Iran would go to war. Nearly seven in 10 said it made it more likely Iran would strike U.S. interests in the Middle East.

President Donald Trump has defended his order to kill Soleimani by calling it an action "to stop a war," but a majority of respondents, 52 percent, were critical of Trump's behavior with Iran, calling it "reckless."

More than 40 percent of those polled said they supported the drone strike at the Baghdad airport which killed Soleimani, 62, last week, but 33 percent opposed it and 25 percent were undecided.

Soleimani led Iran's Quds Force, is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the Trump administration designated as a terrorist organization in 2019. The United States said in a Jan. 2 announcement of his killing that his Quds Force was responsible for hundreds of U.S. and coalition service member deaths.

The online survey of 1,005 adults was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

On Wednesday, more than a dozen missiles launched from Iran struck two Iraqi military bases where U.S. forces were stationed in retaliation for Soleimani's killing. Iranian media reported dozens of U.S. troops were killed, but U.S. officials said no service members were hurt by the strikes.

On Thursday, the U.S. House neared a vote on limiting Trump's power to hit Iran militarily.

The United States targeted Soleimani after protesters, angered by deadly U.S. airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah, stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on New Year's Eve.

The Dec. 29 strikes came after a rocket attack on a military base a couple days earlier in northern Iraq killed a U.S. Defense Department contractor, and also injured four U.S. service members and two members of Iraqi security forces, chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.