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Plans to impose tough new sanctions on Iran in order to get it to halt its nuclear programme would receive strong public backing in the European Union and in the US, according to a poll for the Financial Times.

Amid growing concern in western capitals about Iran’s expanding atomic capability, the Harris poll taken for the FT shows that at least twice as many people in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the US believe it would be better to impose “tough new sanctions” on Iran rather than do nothing and “live with the likelihood that it has nuclear weapons”.

In recent years the US, UK and France have strongly backed sanctions on Iran while the rest of the EU has largely wavered. While politicians in many states believe Iran must be stopped, others argue this is impossible and the best policy by the west would be “containment” of its strategic ambitions.

However, the poll finds that support for sanctions is strong across all the EU’s leading nations. In Spain, for example, 55 per cent of people support tough new sanctions against 11 per cent who say the west should accept there is nothing it can do. In Germany, 44 per cent support sanctions against 16 per cent who... >>>