Washington DC - A majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump started the war on Iran at least in part to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a new poll indicates.

From March 6 to 8, Data for Progress conducted a poll of 1,272 likely voters nationwide to probe Americans' views of the US-Israeli war on Iran, including perceptions of the Trump administration's motivations.

The survey – paid for by Drop Site News and Zeteo – found that 52% of respondents believed Trump was "at least partly motivated to take military action against Iran in order to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal."

When breaking it down by party affiliation, 81% of Democrats, 52% of independents or third-party voters, and 26% of Republicans believed the Epstein scandal was a motivating factor for the war.

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Trump has been implicated in the documents recently released by the Justice Department on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including allegations he sexually assaulted a minor in the 1980s. The president has denied any wrongdoing.

Amid the fallout, the Trump administration late last month launched missile strikes across Iran in coordination with Israel. The US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,395 people to date, Iran's deputy health minister Ali Jafarian told Al Jazeera.

Iran has since launched retaliatory strikes on Gulf countries which host US military bases and other assets. Meanwhile, Israel has ramped up its attacks on Lebanon, as human rights organizations and experts warn that its genocide in Palestine is ongoing.

A majority of Americans surveyed were against the Iran war at 55%, with 39% saying they strongly disapproved. Nearly half said they believed the war would make their lives worse.

The Trump administration has given mixed messages on the timing and reasons for the US war on Iran.

The White House has suggested Iran was not negotiating seriously on a deal to limit its nuclear ambitions – claims Tehran has denied – and that the US needed to destroy the country's missile capabilities. Trump had also openly encouraged the Iranian people to pursue regime change.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the US attacked Iran after learning that Israel was planning to do so first. He told reporters, "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

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An astounding 41% of survey respondents said they believe Trump is "pursuing this [war] primarily for Israeli interest," while 50% said they believed it was primarily for US interests and 9% said they didn't know.

Around 46% of people – including 75% of Democrats, 50% of independents, and 17% of Republicans – see Trump as "more responsive to the interests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than the interests of the American people."

More than half of the survey respondents – 83% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 20% of Republicans – said they would be less likely to support a 2028 presidential candidate who backs the war on Iran, while 59% of Republicans said they would be more likely to do so.