Most Americans think Trump’s escalation of tensions with Iran was driven by his upcoming impeachment trial

• More Americans than not believe that President Donald Trump authorizing a strike on an Iranian commander was partly driven by his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, according to a new Insider poll.
• The administration has offered only thinly-sourced and contradictory explanations as to why they decided to kill Soleimani at that particular moment.
• Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have reported further that Trump decided to order the strike curry favor with some GOP Senators ahead of his impeachment trial. 
• In all, 60% of respondents in Insider polling believed the timing of the strike was somehow connected to impeachment compared to 27.8% who did not think the timing of two events were linked. 
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More Americans than not believe that President Donald Trump authorizing a strike on an Iranian commander was partly driven by his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, according to a new Insider poll.

In the ten days since the US carried out a strike that killed top Iranian military official Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport, the administration has offered many thinly-sourced and contradictory explanations as to why they decided to kill Soleimani at that particular moment.

Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have reported further that Trump decided to order a strike to curry favor with GOP Senators who favor a more hawkish, aggressive US stance towards Iran ahead of his impeachment trial in the Senate.

While Trump had adopted far more adversarial posturing towards Iran, including pulling out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal, the killing of a top military official is his administration’s most significant escalation of tensions yet, setting off a conflict that put US forces and allies in danger. 

With the administration’s attempts at justifying the strike continuing to unravel more and more by the day, Americans now believe that Trump’s decision to strike was at least possibly motivated by his upcoming impeachment trial.

Insider asked 1,063 respondents in SurveyMonkey Audience polling: “Shortly after President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, the administration escalated the conflict with Iran. This lead to sporadic armed conflict between the two nations. What best describes your view about these events?”

In all, 60% believed the timing of the strike was somehow connected to impeachment, including over a quarter of respondents who said the strike was “definitely” related to impeachment, compared to 27.8% who did not think the timing of two events were linked. 

• 18.6% said they “didn’t believe the timing was linked whatsoever.” 
• 9.2% said “the timing is probably not linked.” 
• 16.8% said “the timing is possibly linked.” 
• 16.7% said they thought “the timing is probably linked.”
• 26.5% said they believed “the timing is definitely linked” between the events.
• 12.5% weren’t sure. 

Of respondents, 28% identified as slightly, moderately or very conservative, 40% identified as slightly, moderately, or very liberal, and the remainder declined to say or identified as neither.  

In the week of January 13, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to finally transmit two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abusing his office and obstructing Congress to the US Senate, which will hold a trial determining whether to convict or acquit Trump on the charges. 

Even though Trump is highly unlikely to be removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate, being the third US president to be impeached and face a trial is a significant stain on his presidential legacy. 

US officials including Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said they had intelligence showing Soleimani was planning an immediate and lethal attack.

But they failed, however, to brief Congress on the threat before launching the strike, and have not provided any specific details to support Trump’s most recent claim that Soleimani had immediate plans to attack four US embassies. 

On Sunday, the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told CBS’ “Face The Nation” that he himself “didn’t see” the evidence to support Trump’s claim that Soleimani was about to attack US embassies.

In a number of  tweets on January 13, Trump himself continued to maintain that US intelligence showed Soleimani posed an “imminent” threat to the US, but even if he didn’t, “it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!”

Walt Hickey contributed to this report.

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SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn’t try to weight its sample based on race or income. Total 1,093 respondents collected January 10-11, 2020, a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.