Despite persistent disillusionment with the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans support taking military action against Iran if that country continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The poll, conducted Sunday through Wednesday, found that 57 percent of Americans favor military intervention if Iran's Islamic government pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms.

Support for military action against Tehran has increased over the past year, the poll found, even though public sentiment against the war in neighboring Iraq remains strong: 53 percent said they believe the situation there was not worth going to war.

The poll results suggest that the difficulties the United States has encountered in Iraq have not turned the public against the possibility of future military actions elsewhere in the Middle East.

Support for a potential confrontation with Iran was strongest among Republicans, with 76 percent of GOP respondents to the poll endorsing the idea of military intervention. But even among Democrats, who overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq, support for possible military action against Iran stood at 49 percent.

Some poll respondents said they believe Iran poses a more serious threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq did.

Experts said the public's views on Iran appear to have hardened in part because of the more aggressive, anti-Western posture of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The former mayor of Tehran, who was elected last year, has riled the international community with remarks denying the Holocaust and declarations that Iran would defy pressure from Europe and the United States and continue to pursue efforts to enrich uranium.

His comments have fostered an impression of him as "very reckless, a real rogue, as opposed to simply a populist," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University who is an authority on wartime public opinion. Rising support for military action against Iran "suggest concerns about the new president," he said.

Mueller said the surge in support for confronting Iran is "impressive," especially considering the public's misgivings about the war in Iraq. But he added that poll respondents are often more inclined to voice support for military intervention when the question is framed broadly, and the potential for casualties is unclear.

"You always get higher support for things like 'military action,'because that could just mean bombing, as opposed to sending troops or going to war," Mueller said.

The poll shows that while most Americans remain disenchanted with the war in Iraq, opinions have stabilized, at least for now. The percentage saying they believe the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over had dipped slightly, to 53 percent in this week's poll, compared to 56 percent in a survey a year earlier.

When asked who is winning the war in Iraq, 33 percent said the United States, 7 percent said the insurgents, and 55 percent answered that neither side was winning.

Americans remain divided over how long U.S. forces should stay in Iraq. The poll found that 40 percent believe the United States should remain in Iraq for "as long as it takes"; 36 percent want U.S. troops to be withdrawn within a year; and 14 percent said they support immediate withdrawal.

Respondents were also almost evenly divided over the question of whether the war in Iraq is really part of Washington's war on terrorism, with 51 percent saying it is and 46 percent saying it is not. Opinions were split largely along party lines.

Finally, the poll found that 32 percent of Americans believe that terrorism around the world has increased because of the situation in Iraq, while 17 percent believe it has decreased. Forty-seven percent said the problem has remained about the same.

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