A new poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that 63 percent of respondents in the U.S. “would turn to military force to prevent Iran from going nuclear.” But the pollsters questions contain unproven assumptions about the effectiveness of military strikes and suggest that failure to act militarily may hasten an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Respondents were asked to choose [PDF, page 27] between “preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action,” or “avoiding a military conflict with Iran, even if means Iran may develop nuclear weapons.” Built into these questions is the assumption that military action can prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or, conversely, that the lack of military action may ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon. Policy experts in Israel and the U.S. have consistently challenged this understanding of the Iranian nuclear showdown.

Last month, former Israeli internal security chief Yuval Diskin warned that :

[Israel's leadership] presents a false view to the public on the Iranian bomb, as though acting against Iran would prevent a nuclear bomb. But attacking Iran will encourage them to develop a bomb all the faster.

Indeed, the pollsters at Pew could take some lessons from Diskin about avoiding false trade-offs between bombing Iran and preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. They could also have listened to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor who observed that “an attack on Iran wouldn’t add anything to our security.” Or they could have watched former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan’s warnings on 60 Minutes that an attack on Iran would “ignite regional war” and “there’s no military attack that can halt the Iranian nuclear project. It could only delay it.”

In the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized that “giving diplomacy a chance” is the best “way forward,” and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. (appointed by George H.W. Bush) Thomas Pickering warned that “[A military strike] has a very high propensity, in my view, of driving Iran in the direction of openly declaring and deciding [...] to make a nuclear weapon.”

Finally, and from perhaps the least political source, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that “an attack could have considerable regional and global security, political, and economic repercussions” but “it is unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.”

This uncertainty was nowhere to be found in Pew’s questions which posed a clear tradeoff between taking military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and “avoiding a military conflict” at the expense of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. This tradeoff presented to poll respondents fails to take into account the overwhelming evidence that no such trade-off exists. President Obama has committed to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and said it was “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” But the willingness of politicians and pollsters to portray a tradeoff between military action and Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon promotes an inaccurate set of policy choices which, ultimately, may undermine efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Senate Republican hawk Lindsey Graham (SC) said on Fox News last night that the U.S. shouldn’t negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program until it accedes to all U.S. demands and gives up its nuclear program entirely. The remark comes after a week where Congress considered a flurry of hawkish legislation and resolutions about Iran ahead of the next round of nuclear talks next week in Baghdad.

Graham offered his curious take on what it means to negotiate — demanding that Iran accept all U.S. demands prior to negotiation — in a conversation with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who indicated that his negotiating tactic was probably a non starter. Graham first emphasized his hawkish bent by noting that the “only way” for an agreement to be reached between the sides was for the U.S. to threaten “a strike by the United States.” He went on:

GRAHAM: Here’s what we should do. We should tell the Iranians, no negotiations, stop enriching, open up the site on the bottom of the mountain, a secret site. Then we will talk about lifting sanctions. You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think they will probably stay “go fish” on that one.

Watch the video:

Leave aside that the Fordow site is not “secret” (it’s under U.N. inspections and monitored by camera) and that reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons (Graham doubts the intelligence), Graham’s position prompts one to ask: What’s the alternative to negotiations, since Graham is proposing pre-conditions that Iran would never meet? The Senator from South Carolina’s been busy on that front, too — and falsely citing the Obama administration to back himself up. The House yesterday passed a resolution that seeks to shift U.S. “red line” for an attack to an Iranian “nuclear capability” — something Graham mentioned on Fox News — from an Iranian push for nuclear weapons.

While the CIA has laid out a specific definition, the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Sentae’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.”

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In their latest push for U.S. military involvement in the Syrian conflict, three of the most hawkish Senators today introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. help arm the Syrian rebels through Arab allies. Suggesting support for regional efforts to arm the opposition, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) called for condemnation of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who for more than a year has cracked down with the full force of his military against anti-government demonstrators and rebels.

ABC News described the Senators’ bill:

The resolution supports calls by Arab leaders to provide the Syrian people with weapons and other material support and calls on President Obama to work closely with regional partners to “implement these efforts effectively.”

At a press conference, Lieberman said:

We in the United States have both a moral and strategic reason to support their efforts by at least giving them the means with which to defend themselves.

The Hill reports that the McCain-Graham-Lieberman resolution is likely to be merged with another by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) calling for a U.S. government report examining the rebels and gleaning information about its different factions. Other aspects of the resolutions also overlap. The Hill went on to expand on the call to support the Syrian opposition’s self-defense:

That support would likely come in the form of weapons and ammunition for anti-Assad forces. McCain declined to comment on what specific weapons could shipped to rebel troops in the country.

But the Arizona Republicans said those arms could be funneled through the same lines that the “non-lethal” supplies being sent to Syria by the U.S. and Turkey.

The Hill also noted that McCain, Lieberman and Graham did not call in their resolution for airstrikes against Syria. Earlier this month, McCain voiced support for U.S. air strikes against Assad’s regime aimed at helping the rebels topple it. Lieberman and Graham almost immediately followed McCain’s lead.

But those sorts of actions are deeply unpopular among Americans. A Fox News poll released on March 15 said 68 percent of those surveyed opposed air strikes aimed at overthrowing the country, and only 19 percent supported such a strategy. A slim majority opposed and 37 supported air strikes narrowly limited to protecting anti-government rebels. Even the U.S. arming the rebels was unpopular: 64 percent of respondents opposed it, with a quarter of them supporting it.

According to the Hill, “Lieberman said it was decided to exclude the airstrikes demand from the resolution, fearing it would sap bipartisan support for the legislation among rank-and-file senators.”

This month, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta fell under attack for making public statements asserting that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran has not yet decided whether to pursue a nuclear weapon. Newt Gingrich adviser Christian Whiton accused Panetta of not “telling the truth” about Iran’s nuclear program and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Clapper that, despite U.S. intelligence assessments to the contrary, “I’m very convinced that they’re going down the road of developing a nuclear weapon.”

Today, Graham asked Panetta a similar question during a Senate Budget Committee hearing:

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Do you believe the Iranians are trying to develop a nuclear weapon?

LEON PANETTA: I think they’re developing a nuclear capability [but] our intelligence makes clear that they haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.

Watch him:

Graham moved on and chose not to publicly disagree with the Secretary of Defense but the message from Panetta was clear. U.S. intelligence, at this time, does not conclude that Iran is in the process of building a nuclear weapon.

These views are echoed by the the IAEA — the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency — which, just last week, reiterated its “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme,” but came short of concluding that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Republicans often criticize President Obama for not hewing exactly to advice from top military leaders (a criticism those military leaders find “offensive“). But when it has suited their agendas, those very same Republicans have themselves not shied away from publicly disagreeing with top uniformed military officials.

In September, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined colleagues to criticize Obama for failing to offer a plan for Iraq that “reflects the best military advice of U.S. commanders.”

But Graham isn’t always so willing to listen to top American military officials. Last week the South Carolina Republican disagreed publicly with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s assessment that Iran hasn’t decided on whether it will build a nuclear bomb.

This weekend on CNN, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey spoke out against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the immediate future and added that the pressure and diplomacy tracks should be pursued because the Joint Chiefs “are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor.” Once again, Graham shot back, saying yesterday on CNN that he disagreed with the top U.S. military officer:

GRAHAM: But you know, General Dempsey is a fine man. But when he said that he thought the Iranians were rational actors, I just want to go on record. I don’t think it’s rational for a country to try to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in a restaurant in Washington.

I don’t see what Iran is doing is being rational. I see it as being dangerous and so that’s why we need to make sure Syria ends well.

Watch the video:

The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington indeed represents a threat — one Clapper outlined. But Graham is missing the larger picture. Last month, Clapper said in his congressional testimony that Iran’s decision — yet unmade, according to reliable media organizations, U.N. agencies and reported U.S. intelligence estimates — to build a nuclear weapon or not “would be based on a cost-benefit analysis.” Clapper went on to give several examples of factors that could influence this cost-benefit analysis, such as economic and diplomatic pressure.

While Republican politicians should be free to criticize opinions expressed by military officers, they ought to cut out the hypocrisy of insisting on Obama’s fealty to military advice when jettisoning the officers’ opinions on topics where they disagree with the brass.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey urged against an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this morning that “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” and such a strike would be “destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve [Israel's] long-term objectives.”

Dempsey, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S., went on to emphasize that while all options remain on the table, U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon:

MARTIN DEMPSEY: We also know, or believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the [...] effort to weaponize their nuclear capability.

FAREED ZAKARIA: You think that is still unclear? [...]

DEMPSEY: It is. I believe it is unclear and on that basis I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.

Watch the interview:

Dempsey’s conclusion that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon reflects the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon but were “keeping themselves in a position to make that decision.”

The November IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program found that while there were possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, the nuclear watchdog agency couldn’t confirm that Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA’s findings were upheld by CIA Director David Petraeus last month. Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the IAEA report is “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would be destabilizing but while hawks on Capitol Hill are eager to portray Iran as a “martyr state” hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons, senior intelligence and military officials take a very different view. “We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor,” said Dempsey. “And it’s for that reason that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”

Yesterday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. intelligence suggests Iran has not yet decided whether to pursue a nuclear weapon. At the time, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) disagreed with the DNI and, citing no evidence, declared he was “very convinced” that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom made similar assertions while responding to a question about the DNI’s assessment that Iran is not yet constructing a nuclear weapon, saying:

SHALOM: Everyone now knows most of the world, if not all the world, knows the Iranians are trying to develop a nuclear bomb. It’s out of the question. They have all the proof. Everyone knows the security and intelligence [services] of the western world knows very well the Iranians are developing a nuclear bomb, and they should be stopped.

Watch it:

But Shalom’s comments, which directly contradict Clapper’s testimony yesterday, also fail to match up with Israeli intelligence assessments on Iran’s nuclear program. Last month, Haaretz’s Amos Harel reported that, “Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb, according to the intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

That assessment would fit with U.S. intelligence estimates and the IAEA’s most recent report which, while expressing concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, didn’t conclude that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon.