Europeans favor preemptive strike against Iran's nukes?

Jerusalem Post:

Over half of Europeans would support a preemptive military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a poll released last week by a London think-tank reports.

A survey commissioned by the pro-business think tank, Open Europe, found that a majority of those surveyed in 18 EU member states including France and Britain, backed military action as an option in dealing with the threat of Iranian nuclear proliferation, while majorities in 9 nations including Germany and Spain were opposed.

However, the April 4 survey of more than 17,000 Europeans in March conducted by the French polling firm TNS-Sofres found little support for increasing military expenditures to counter or contain the threat.

In response to the statement, "We must stop countries like Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even if that means taking military action", 52 percent of Europeans agreed, 40 percent disagreed and 8 percent stated they were undecided.

Support for the military option varied widely, with Danes giving the greatest support at 68 percent and Slovaks the least at 37 percent. Support for military action amongst the great powers was closely divided; France 53 percent, Britain 51 percent, Italy 49 percent, and Germany 45 percent.

Questioned as to the threat their countries faced from "Islamic fundamentalism", European opinion was more diverse. While 58 percent over all agreed militant Islam was a serious threat, the national responses ranged from 71 percent in Britain, 66 percent in Germany, 64 percent in France, to 24 percent in Latvia.

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I suspect that Latvia has not been much of a blip on the Islamic religious bigots' radar screen.

It also appears reading between the lines in this survey that the Euros want the US to do the dirty work for them again since they are not willing to spend more than their already anemic defense budgets require.

I am also somewhat skeptical of the results on the attitude question about the preemptive strike since they clearly are not willing to cut off trade to accomplish the same objective. If they were a strike would probably not be needed in the first place since Iran would not have the resources to continue its development of nuke bombs.