I am with you on this, though I am in a minority at work. An underappreciated benefit is that you are signaling to the reader, when they first see the variable, that it will only be used briefly. That helps them ration their attention.

The strongest counter argument is that developers cannot be trusted to avoid building a house of cards if you let them use, even a single shortcut. And there is plenty of evidence, including my own experience, to back that up. But if you can prove you will re-factor when the time is right, it becomes a lot easier to make your case for brevity.