(JTA) – Only a third of American respondents to a survey about President Barack Obama’s performance said they approved of his handling of the Iran nuclear deal. In eight issues measured in the new Gallop survey published Thursday, Obama scored lowest when it came to the Iran deal — a controversial U.S.-led agreement that, if approved and implemented, will result in the lifting of some sanction on Iran in exchange to its scaling back of its nuclear activities. In total, Obama scored an approval rating of 47 percent in the survey, which was conducted this month in telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,011 adults from across the United States. The margin of sampling error is four percentage points. The president’s policy toward Iran has been a major focus as he tries to drum up support for the accord. Obama earns his highest marks on race relations, education and climate change, though he does not receive majority approval on any. As recently as February, Americans gave Iran the lowest favorable rating of 22 countries, and a strong majority felt Iran’s development of nuclear weapons posed a “critical” threat to the United States. Consistent with partisans’ views on other issues, 56 percent of Democrats surveyed by Gallup approve of Obama’s handling of the situation in Iran, contrasted with 10 percent of Republicans. Race relations remains the issue Obama receives the greatest approval on (46%) but this is down five percentage points from when Gallup last measured it in 2013. Aside from Obama’s handling of Iran, his approval is low on immigration (36%) — which, despite this, is up four points from the prior reading from August 2014. Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed