A solid majority of Americans support direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program, but a similar majority also support military strikes if necessary to stop the country from getting a nuclear weapon, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found 63 percent of Americans approve of direct negotiations with Iran, seemingly endorsing Barack Obama’s pledge as a candidate to meet with Iran or any other rogue nation. Another 28 percent oppose talks with Iran.

Diplomats from the US and five other countries met with counterparts from Iran last week in Switzerland, the highest level talks with the country in three decades.

But Americans are skeptical about the prospects -- 64 percent say the talks will not succeed at getting Iran to stop its suspected work on a nuclear weapon while just 22 percent believe the talks will eventually pay off.

Assuming the talks do not work, 78 percent of Americans approve of tougher economic sanctions, while just 12 percent do not approve. Despite the majority support for sanctions, 56 percent of Americans don’t think those will work, either.

Finally, 61 percent say it’s critical to stop Iran, even if it takes military action, while 24 percent say it’s more important to avoid military action even if it means Iran becomes a nuclear power.

“There is broad willingness across the political spectrum to use military force to prevent Iran from going nuclear,” says the Pew report. The numbers:

--71 percent of Republicans support military action if necessary;
--66 percent of independents;
--51 percent of Democrats.

The poll of 1500 adults was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 and included cell phones as well as landlines. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

For the full report, go to http://people-press.org/report/550/.

A couple of weeks ago, the United States, without explanation, released five Iranian diplomats that the U.S. military had been holding in Iraq for more than two years. The official statement offered nothing about why. What U.S. officials would say privately is that the U.S. military really didn't want to let the Iranians go.

That leaves you with the suggestion that there was good reason to hold the Iranians in the first place, but the new Status of Forces Agreement required that we turn them over to the Iraqis, who let them go. Now, from an unexpected source, comes word that in fact there wasn't any good reason for holding them in the first place.

Barbara Slavin of The Washington Times, the capital's conservative news organ, reported last week that the U.S. actually had no evidence that the Iranians had been involved in attacks on U.S. forces. The Iranians were essentially hostages, she wrote, held as potential "leverage."

Slavin, who used to cover the State Department for USA Today and wrote a book on Iran (Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation), cited two unnamed sources in her report, one a current official and the other a former official. Slavin's report focused on the three Iranians who American officials had said were member the Quds Force. She quoted a current White House official as sticking up for the original version of why they were held but also acknowledging that he didn't know of any specific anti-U.S. actions the three had been involved in.

Actually, her story sounded a lot like what Iraqi officials were saying at the time. To quote then and now Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the U.S. raids that led to the detentions were "very, very embarrassing."

But Slavin's account really ticked off Gen. David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq when the Iranians were arrested and happened to be in Washington the morning Slavin's piece appeared.

 Petraeus and Slavin were both at a conference on Iran sponsored by the U.S. Central Command, which Petraeus now heads, and the Brookings Institution. According to The Washington Post's Al Kamen, Petraeus was livid and gave Slavin a very public dressing down, even accusing her of "irresponsible journalism." Kamen described her as "unflappable."

Today, it was Slavin's turn. In a followup that the Times didn't exactly trumpet (Page A9 in print) Slavin quotes former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker as saying he knows of no evidence that links the three Iranian Quds Force officials to specific acts against U.S.forces. "I was not aware of any specific information linking (the three Iranians) to specific acts against coalition personnel," was the precise quote.

That is an amazing statement coming from Crocker. Petraeus and Crocker were the yin and yang of Bush administration Iraq policy, the Abbott and Costello, the Bogart and Bacall, or, for the younger set, Harold and Kumar, so tightly spooned that an assessment of embassy operations released today made a special point of noting that "the relationship between the embassy and the military is remarkably good. Ambassador Crocker and the military commanders insisted on 'one team, one mission,'and their subordinates followed suit." (Another part of that report was the finding that the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is way overstaffed.)

The two jogged together every Sunday, according to this story by McClatchy's Leila Fadel, and met at least five other times a week to mull over events in the country.

Such tight cooperation surely meant Crocker and Petraeus shared information on why the Iranians had been picked up — especially since Crocker actually met with the Iranian ambassador five months after the three had been seized.

But maybe there wasn't all that much to share. As Foreign Minister Zebari told Slavin for today's story: "Really, they were doing some consular work."

Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is criticizing the Obama administration for looking to engage in a round of "hot dog diplomacy" with Iran in the wake of the government's violent crackdown on protestors.

President Barack Obama may be feeling the heat of a summer of challenges, as well as angst about what's happening in Iran. His poll numbers are inching downward and now are hitting new lows.

A three-day average of daily Gallup Poll surveys finds Obama's job approval hitting 57 percent, his lowest since taking office. He'd dipped below 60 percent in Gallup's polling four times before this week, but never hit 57 percent.

The Gallup three-day average also found 35 percent of American adults disapproving of the way Obama's handling his job.

At the same time, a new Rasmussen Poll finds Obama's job approval among likely voters at 54 percent Monday - up a point from a low of 53 percent marked over the weekend.

The average approval rating of six recent public polls, compiled by the website realclearpolitics.com, is now 58.7 percent. The average disapproval is 33.7 percent.

As we noted a few weeks ago, Obama's entering a tough new phase of his presidency, more difficult than his first 100 days. Among the summertime challenges: pushing a health care overhaul that could depend on broad tax increases and now has a sky-high price tag courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office. 

Also, the Iran election and criticisms that Obama didn't do enough to help or encourage protesters,  rising fears that North Korea will become a nuclear power, rising gas prices and a continuing recession, to name a few.

As a snapshot, a nearly 59 percent average approval rating is still pretty good, and suggests Obama still has plenty of political capital to use, at least in the domestic political fights. 

But if there is a downward trend, and he continues to lose support, that could make Democrats facing re-election next year increasingly nervous about following his lead. And that would make his job all the more difficult.

David Letterman suggests some parallels between Iran's disputed election and the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

"This guy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I mean, he claims victory and he is very unpopular. ... And the danger politically of this, he could ruin the political career of his brother, Jeb Ahmadinejad," joked the man who has riled Sarah Palin fans for a crass joke about her daughter. "You got to be careful."