US Senate rejects bid to curb Trump's Iran war powers
WASHINGTON : The Republican-led US Senate rejected a Democratic-led bid on Friday to block President Donald Trump from using further military force against Iran, hours after the president said he would consider more bombing.
The Senate vote was 53 to 47 against a war powers resolution that would have required congressional approval for more hostilities against Iran. The vote was along party lines, except Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman voted no, with Republicans, and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul voted yes, with Democrats.
Senator Tim Kaine, chief sponsor of the resolution, has tried for years to wrest back Congress' authority to declare war from both Republican and Democratic presidents.
Kaine said his latest effort underscored that the US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the sole power to declare war and requires that any hostility with Iran be explicitly authorised by a declaration of war or specific authorisation for the use of military force.
'If you think the president should have to come to Congress, whether you are for or against a war in Iran, you'll support Senate Joint Resolution 59, you'll support the Constitution that has stood the test of time,' Kaine said in a speech before the vote.
Lawmakers have been pushing for more information about weekend US strikes on Iran and the fate of Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.
Earlier on Friday, Trump sharply criticised Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, dropped plans to lift sanctions on Iran, and said he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.
He was reacting to Khamenei's first remarks after a 12-day conflict with Israel that ended when the US launched bombing raids against Iranian nuclear sites.
'Obliterated'
Members of Trump's national security team held classified briefings on the strikes for the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday and Friday. Many Democratic lawmakers left the briefings saying they had not been convinced that Iran's nuclear facilities had been 'obliterated', as Trump announced shortly after the raid.
Opponents of the resolution said the strike on Iran was a single, limited operation within Trump's rights as commander-in-chief, not the start of sustained hostilities.
Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who served as ambassador to Japan during Trump's first term, said the measure could prevent any president from acting quickly against a country that has been a long-term adversary.
'We must not shackle our president in the middle of a crisis when lives are on the line,' Hagerty said before the vote.
Trump has rejected any suggestion that damage to Iran's nuclear programme was not as profound as he has said. Iran says its nuclear research is for civilian energy production.
Under US law, Senate war powers resolutions are privileged, meaning that the chamber had to promptly consider and vote on the measure, which Kaine introduced this month.
But to be enacted, the resolution would have had to pass the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, said this week he did not think it was the right time for such an effort.
During Trump's first term, in 2020, Kaine introduced a similar resolution to rein in the Republican president's ability to wage war against Iran. That measure passed both the Senate and House of Representatives, with some Republican support, but did not garner enough votes to survive the president's veto.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
Trump announces big progress on Russia after Putin summit
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed 'big progress' on Russia, days after meeting his counterpart from that country, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska for a high-stakes summit aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. 'BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, without elaborating - AFP
Malaysian Reserve
8 hours ago
- Malaysian Reserve
Three US states to send National Guard troops to Washington
WASHINGTON — The Republican governors of West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio announced on Saturday that they will send hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington to reinforce the deployment ordered by President Donald Trump, reported German Press Agency (dpa). The United States (US) state of West Virginia plans to send 300 to 400 National Guard troops to the capital, Governor Patrick Morrisey said, to help restore 'cleanliness and safety' at the request of the government. Henry McMaster, governor of South Carolina, said on the social media platform X that he had approved the deployment of 200 National Guardsmen 'to support President Trump in his mission to restore law and order' to the nation's capital. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said he authorised sending 150 Ohio National Guard members to 'carry out patrols and serve as added security,' according to US media reports. Trump has justified the deployment by citing rising crime and public disorder in Washington, claims not reflected in official crime statistics. Critics say the move appears aimed more at demonstrating strength amid domestic political pressures. The additional troops are intended to supplement a previously announced contingent of 800 National Guard members, US media reported, citing government sources. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new units could carry weapons, unlike the current unarmed patrols. The military has stated that National Guard troops in Washington are equipped with personal protective gear, including body armour, while weapons remain stored unless needed. The deployment follows a controversial decree issued by Trump on Monday, which invoked the Home Rule Act to place Washington's police under federal command during a state of emergency. However, Washington Attorney General Brian Schwalb has argued that the law only allows the US president to instruct Washington's mayor, Muriel Bowser, on how law enforcement agencies should be deployed. –BERNAMA-dpa
Malay Mail
8 hours ago
- Malay Mail
Putin wins optics, Trump shifts tone — but summit leaves key issues open
MOSCOW, Aug 17 — In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off US sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president. Outside Russia, Putin was widely hailed as the victor of the Alaska summit while at home, Russian state media cast the US president as a prudent statesman, even as critics in the West accused him of being out of his depth. Russian state media made much of the fact that Putin was afforded a military fly-over, that Trump waited for him on the red carpet, and then let the Russian president ride with him in the back of the 'Big Beast', the US presidential limousine. 'Western media are in a state that could be described as derangement verging on complete insanity,' said Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign minister spokeswoman. 'For three years, they talked about Russia's isolation, and today they saw the red carpet rolled out to welcome the Russian president to the United States,' she said. But Putin's biggest summit wins related to the war in Ukraine, where he appears to have persuaded Trump, at least in part, to embrace Russia's vision of how a deal should be done. Trump had gone into the meeting saying he wanted a quick ceasefire and had threatened Putin and Russia's biggest buyer of its crude oil — China — with sanctions. Afterwards, Trump said he had agreed with Putin that negotiators should go straight to a peace settlement and not via a ceasefire as Ukraine and its European allies had been demanding - previously with US support. 'The US president's position has changed after talks with Putin, and now the discussion will focus not on a truce, but on the end of the war. And a new world order. Just as Moscow wanted,' Olga Skabeyeva, one of Russian state TV's most prominent talkshow hosts, said on Telegram. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying Kyiv's embrace of the West had become a threat to its security, something Ukraine has dismissed as a false pretext for what it calls a colonial-style land grab. The war — the deadliest in Europe for 80 years — has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts. No economic reset The fact that the summit even took place was a win for Putin before it even started, given how it brought him in from the diplomatic cold with such pomp. Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, accused of the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia denies any wrongdoing, saying it acted to remove unaccompanied children from a conflict zone. Neither Russia nor the United States are members of the court. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and a close Putin ally, said the summit had achieved a major breakthrough when it came to restoring US-Russia relations, which Putin had lamented were at their lowest level since the Cold War. 'The mechanism for high-level meetings between Russia and the United States has been restored in its entirety,' he said. But Putin did not get everything he wanted and it's unclear how durable his gains will be. For one, Trump did not hand him the economic reset he wanted - something that would boost the Russian president at a time when his economy is showing signs of strain after more than three years of war and increasingly tough Western sanctions. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, said before the summit that the talks would touch on trade and economic issues. Putin had brought his finance minister and the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund all the way to Alaska with a view to discussing potential deals on the Arctic, energy, space and the technology sector. In the end, though, they didn't get a look in. Trump told reporters on Air force One before the summit started there would be no business done until the war in Ukraine was settled. It's also unclear how long the sanctions reprieve that Putin won will last. Trump said it would probably be two or three weeks before he would need to return to the question of thinking about imposing secondary sanctions on China, to hurt financing for Moscow's war machine. Nor did Trump — judging by information that has so far been made public — do what some Ukrainian and European politicians had feared the most and sell Kyiv out by doing a deal over the head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Trump made clear that it was up to Zelensky as to whether he would agree — or not — with ideas of land swaps and other elements for a peace settlement that the US president had discussed with Putin in Alaska. Although as Trump's bruising Oval Office encounter with Zelensky showed earlier this year, if Trump thinks the Ukrainian leader is not engaging constructively, he can quickly turn on him. Indeed, Trump was quick to start piling pressure on Zelensky, who is expected in Washington on Monday, saying after the summit that Ukraine had to a deal because, 'Russia is a very big power, and they're not'. 'The main point is that both sides have directly placed responsibility on Kyiv and Europe for achieving future results in the negotiations,' said Medvedev, who added that the summit showed it was possible to negotiate and fight at the same time. Donbas demand While deliberations continue, Russian forces are slowly but steadily advancing on the battlefield and threatening a series of Ukrainian towns and cities whose fall could speed up Moscow's quest to take complete control of the eastern region of Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own. Donetsk, some 25 per cent of which remains beyond Russia's control, and the Luhansk region together make up the industrial Donbas region, which Putin has made clear he wants in its entirety. Putin told Trump he'd be ready to freeze the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, two of the other regions he claims, if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from both Donetsk and Luhansk, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Zelensky rejected the demand, the source said. According to the New York Times, Trump told European leaders that Ukrainian recognition of Donbas as Russian would help get a deal done. And the US is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. Some Kremlin critics said it would be a mistake to credit Putin with too much success at this stage. 'Russia has re-established its status and got dialogue with the US,' said Michel Duclos, a French diplomat who formerly served in Moscow and who is an analyst at the Institut Montaigne think-tank. 'But when you have a war on your hands and your economy is collapsing, these are limited gains.' Russian officials deny the economy, which has been put on a war footing and has proved more resilient than the West forecast despite heavy sanctions, is collapsing. But they have acknowledged signs of overheating and have said the economy could enter recession next year unless policies are adjusted. 'For Putin, economic problems are secondary to his goals, but he understands our vulnerability and the costs involved,' said one source familiar with Kremlin thinking. 'Both sides will have to make concessions. The question is to what extent. The alternative, if we want to defeat them militarily, is to mobilise resources more deeply and use them more skilfully, but we are not going down that road for various reasons,' the person said. 'It will be Trump's job to pressure Ukraine to recognise the agreements.' — Reuters
