Senate Republicans Block Effort To End Trump’s Iran War

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday rejected an effort to rein in President Donald Trump’s ability to wage war against Iran without approval from Congress, ensuring the massive U.S. air and naval bombardment of the country will continue for the foreseeable future. 

The failed 47-53 vote ensures lawmakers will hold no formal debate on another costly military conflict in the Middle East that has already left six U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of Iranian civilians dead. It also comes amid bipartisan concerns about the mission’s shifting objectives, its open-ended scope, and the possibility of Trump committing U.S. boots on the ground. 

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But nearly every Republican argued this week that Trump has legal authority to unilaterally wage war against Iran because its regime posed a threat to U.S. troops in the region. 

“The president has broad authorities under Article II of the Constitution,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said at a press conference. “I think the president is perfectly within his rights to take the steps he took. I think it was a necessary step in order to protect American lives.”

Democrats maintain that Trump should have sought congressional authorization for the strikes, as required by the U.S. Constitution. They forced a vote on the matter under the War Powers Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the Vietnam War to assert its constitutional authority over war-making. The War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress when committing the U.S. armed forces to hostilities in an emergency when the country is under imminent threat and gives lawmakers the power to trigger snap disapproval votes. 

Trump formally notified Congress about the strikes this week, but his claim that the U.S. faced an “imminent” threat from Iran, a U.S. adversary for decades, was met with skepticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. 

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Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a leading advocate for congressional authority in matters of war powers, said after a classified briefing on Iran this week that he has seen no sufficient justification for unilateral action by the president.

“I do not believe this got anywhere near that the U.S. was facing an imminent threat. The term has traditionally been used when talking about military actions,” Kaine said. 

Trump administration officials and their allies on Capitol Hill have thrown out half a dozen justifications for launching a war against Iran, ranging from regime change to nuclear disarmament. Some have argued that the war is not really a war, others have argued that it was Iran that actually started it, and that the U.S. was merely acting defensively by launching missile strikes against Iran alongside Israel.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the lone GOP vote for the war powers resolution, which he helped introduce alongside Kaine, dismissed most of those claims as absurd double-speak in an interview with HuffPost.

“They’ve been saying they’re one week away from a nuclear weapon, I think, since 1996,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said of Iran. “The other thing is, ‘Oh no, we’re really been at war for 40 years, and now we’re just ending the war.’ I mean, most of the arguments don’t seem to hold water.”

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Paul noted the U.S. Constitution conferred the power to declare or initiate war to Congress for a reason: to make war less likely.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a vocal critic of the Trump administration, voted with his party to block the war powers resolution. However, he said that his position could change if U.S. involvement in Iran deepens and drags on for weeks. 

“If it’s clear that this is a weeks-long process, and whether troops are visibly or are covertly deployed there, then we need to have a serious discussion about an authorization for the use of military force,” Tillis said. 

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives will vote on its own War Powers resolution blocking hostilities with Iran on Thursday. That measure is expected to fail, as well, thanks in part to at least seven House Democrats who have indicated their support for the operation that has killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian regime leaders.

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Among Democrats in the Senate, only John Fetterman of Pennsylvania broke ranks and voted to sustain the war in Iran. 

Other Senate Democrats warned that Trump was dragging the U.S. into another “forever” war in the Middle East despite his promises on the 2024 campaign trail about ending such wars. 

“How many parents watched their kids ship off and fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “How many sleepless nights did families have over the last 20 years, worried about their loved ones? How many headlines did we watch over the decades of troops getting shot down, of convoys being attacked, of wounded soldiers returning home forever scarred by the horrors of war? How many hundreds of billions of dollars were wasted? How much anguish and suffering and grief did America endure?”

“This is madness,” he added.

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