'Not our war': US lawmakers attempt to rein in potential strikes on Iran

Middle East Eye

5 hours ago

Two US lawmakers in the House of Representatives have teamed up to introduce a bipartisan resolution that would compel President Donald Trump to seek congressional approval before ordering air strikes on Iran.
US military engagement, alongside Israel against Iran, is largely assessed not only to lead to Iranian retaliation against US assets in the region, but also to potential US entanglement in yet another years-long war in the Middle East.
Trump, in all three of his campaigns for the White House, ran on a no-to-war platform. Now, he is reportedly weighing whether to drop a 30,000-lb "bunker-buster" bomb on an Iranian nuclear facility.
Republican Thomas Massie, a staunch anti-interventionist, and Democrat Ro Khanna, a progressive whose district encompasses Silicon Valley, are hoping to amass support from both parties for a vote on a war powers resolution next week.
"The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn't attacked the United States," Massie said in a statement.
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"Congress has the sole power to declare war against Iran. The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war."
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Khanna said while he believes it's in the interest of US national security for Iran not to develop a nuclear weapon, "I don't believe that will be achieved by the United States getting dragged into a war with Iran."
Both the United Nations' nuclear watchdog and the US intelligence community have said Iran is not close to developing a nuclear weapon.
When pushed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on why taking out a hidden nuclear facility - using a bomb no other country but the US has - would not be a good thing, Khanna pointed to a litany of unknowns.
"We don't know how deep underground Iran actually has those bombs. We do not know how much - spread out - Iran has that capability, and we do not know how quickly they would be able to rebuild, given that they have the centrifuges and the know-how, [and] the estimates range from one to three years," Khanna said.
"There has to be a diplomatic solution," he added.
Trump was in the middle of a months-long negotiation with Iran towards a new nuclear deal, much like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that he pulled out of in 2018, when Israel began air strikes on Tehran one week ago.
Some of the president's most famous and most loyal supporters on the Make America Great Again (MAGA) circuit have made it clear this week that they believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to lure the US into a war that is none of Washington's business.
'De-escalatory vehicle'
Massie and Khanna's resolution follows a similar move in the Senate by Democrat Tim Kaine, who ran for the vice presidency on the Hillary Clinton ticket in 2016.
That resolution, also utilising the War Powers Act, demands a debate in the upper chamber and a vote on any US military engagement in Iran.
Both votes are likely happening next week. On Thursday, Trump announced that he could take up to two weeks to decide on direct US engagement in Israel's war, but many suspect strikes could come as early as this weekend.
'We want to put every single member of Congress on public record of where they stand specifically on war with Iran'
- Cavan Kharrazian, Senior policy advisor, Demand Progress
The 1973 War Powers Act allows any senator to introduce a resolution to withdraw US armed forces from a conflict not authorised by Congress. The legislative branch, which acts as the country's purse, is also supposed to be the one that declares war, not the executive.
But since the 9/11 attacks in particular, the foggy nature of the so-called "war on terror" has enabled the White House to call the shots, especially as Washington has carried out air strikes in countries from Somalia to Pakistan without an official declaration of war.
"Presidents have consistently said that the War Powers Act is an unconstitutional infringement on the executive branch's powers," Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), told Middle East Eye.
"What we've seen on the congressional side is really an unwillingness to force these votes in debates [and] use the mechanisms and procedural tools inside the War Powers Act, because it's just a little bit easier... these [lawmakers] would rather just let the executive branch do what it does and not have to be on the record," he added.
Congress has recently twice been able to successfully push through a war powers motion - during the first Trump administration on Yemen in 2018, and again on Iran in 2020 - but the president vetoed the resolutions.
So what's the point?
"What's important with these resolutions is that we want to put every single member of Congress on public record of where they stand specifically on war with Iran," Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy advisor with Demand Progress, told MEE.
Demand Progress, as well as FCNL, have been lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill to publicly take an anti-war stance along with other civil society organisations.
"It's become extremely popular to criticise past disasters like the Iraq War... [and this vote] will now be an opportunity to show whether they're willing to act when it counts," Kharrazian said.
And in spite of Trump's past vetoes, there was in fact no further escalation with Yemen or Iran at the time, making a war powers resolution a "de-escalatory vehicle that can help pump the brakes and prevent full escalation and full US involvement in a war of choice," Tayyab told MEE.
Pressure
A survey conducted by YouGov, an international online research data and analytics technology group, asked on 17 June whether US strikes on Iran would make America safer.
The largest portion, 37 percent of the 3,471 US adults polled, said the country would be "less safe".
Around a quarter of respondents each said they are "not sure" or that the country would "neither" feel safer or less safe.
Only 14 percent said the US would be safer if the US joined Israel's war.
Another poll published by The Washington Post on Wednesday found that almost half of the 1,008 Americans it surveyed oppose US strikes on Iran, with that figure dwarfing the number of people who do support military action.
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That said, there is an undeniably influential pro-war bloc in Washington that has been pervasive regardless of the president and party affiliation. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and Christians United For Israel (Cufi) are among the leaders in this regard.
Since Israel attacked Iran, Aipac has pushed for House Democrats, some of whom have shown scepticism, to issue statements saying that they stand with Israel.
It has also shown particular animosity toward one Republican, Massie, who put forward the resolution of the war powers in the House.
Earlier this year, an Aipac affiliate group proclaimed that 'Israel, the Holy Land, [is] under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Congressman Tom Massie" for his numerous votes against US military aid packages for Israel.
"I mean, the pressure is real. We know neoconservatives, the pro-Israel lobby, they're leaning incredibly hard in this moment. They've leaned incredibly hard on every single moment this has come up," Kharrazian told MEE.
"We're not naive on the pressures that are against us [but] from [this] past election, we've seen a tidal shift in the narrative and opposition to endless wars in a way that we haven't seen before. So we're really excited for this," to build anti-war momentum, he said.
Advocacy groups are also contending with Trump's billionaire donors. Among the top five is Israeli-born Miriam Adelson, whose Adelson Foundation has also bankrolled organisations such as Birthright Israel and Friends of the IDF.
"One thing that's not talked about enough is just the forces of Christian Zionism," Tayyab told MEE.
"I think some of those groups believe that this is part of just some end times prophecy, which, despite how you know how off the wall it seems, it is a driving force for a lot of the decisions that are being made."
That sentiment was perhaps most famously on display earlier this week when former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson asked Republican Senator Ted Cruz about why he supports Israel.
"I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things," Cruz said.
Cufi is holding its annual summit in the US capital at the end of June.