F16 fighter jet.

A significant majority of Americans would support the use of force, if necessary, to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to a recent national survey by the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Asked in an open-ended question to name the country that poses “the most danger” to U.S. national security interests, the largest group of respondents (45.1 percent) said the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Indeed, Iranian leaders, who have publicly threatened to wipe Israel ‘off the map,’ have continued to improve their country’s ability to build a nuclear weapon on short notice, while repeatedly rejecting a decade’s worth of international diplomacy and economic pressure by the United States and others aimed at persuading them to change course,” the group said in a statement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Iran is quickly nearing a “zone of immunity,” a technical state in which it wouold be difficult for U.S. or Israeli conventional airstrikes to degrade, delay or destroy Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

A majority of Americans (62 percent) favor preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, even if this option means the use of military force, over the alternative of avoiding armed conflict and accepting the likelihood that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. A strong majority of self-identified conservatives (78.6 percent) and a majority of self-identified moderates (57.8 percent), in addition to 44.6 percent of self-identified liberals, support U.S. military action to stop a nuclear-armed Iran.