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Republicans In Disarray On Trump’s Iran War

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WASHINGTON — If President Donald Trump’s administration seems confused about the goals of the war he launched against Iran, GOP lawmakers don’t seem to have any answers either.

Four days into a war which Trump has said could last weeks and has already left six U.S. service members and hundreds of Iranian civilians dead, Republican members of Congress offered distinctly different justifications for the strikes. Some want regime change in Iran, while some want to destroy its nuclear weapons program and ability to launch long-range missiles. Others prefer a more limited mission akin to Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela.

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What they do mostlyagree on, however, is that President Donald Trump is within his legal bounds to carry out the operation and that Congress doesn’t need to vote to authorize it, as required by the U.S. Constitution. That is, as long as it doesn’t involve boots on the ground.

“It’s using air and naval assets, to go, not completely eliminate, but certainly diminish the capability that Iran has in terms of ballistic missiles,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Monday when asked about his understanding of the war. “You’ve got a strait there that’s really important to global trade, and there have been attacks on American ships in that region by the Iranians already, so I think it’s, to me, that’s my understanding of it.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called the massive and unprecedented U.S. military strikes against Iran a “defensive” action taken to “counter the imminent threat posed by Iran’s aggression toward American troops, citizens, installations and assets.” And he suggested, after a classified briefing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, that Israel dragged Trump into the war by threatening to attack Iran.

“If Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then [Iran] would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets,” Johnson said as some MAGA influencers continued to question the Trump administration’s decision to go to war.

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Other Republicans said they hoped the U.S. would go further by changing the government of Iran, a far more difficult task that could require months of war.

“It’s not just about a nuclear weapon,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime advocate of bombing Iran, said in an interview on Fox News. “They have been killing Americans through their proxies for decades. It’s about not just nuclear weapons, it’s about being the largest state sponsor of terrorism. This regime is in its death throes. Finish them off.”

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), meanwhile, argued that the U.S. is not engaged in a “war” in Iran, even though both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have called it one.

“What [Trump has] done is launch a very targeted operation to take out the ballistic missile manufacturing capacity and the launch capacity of Iran,” Hagerty told HuffPost.

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The shifting and incoherent explanations for the war only added to the confusion on Capitol Hill. At first, Trump and his aides said the goal was regime change, urging the people of Iran to rise up and overtake their government. Then they said it was about threat reduction, then regime change again. Trump has given shifting answers in phone interviews with over a dozen reporters about the timeline for the war, ranging from anywhere from a few days to a month or longer.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is supportive of eliminating the threat Iran poses, said the administration could be clearer about its intentions with the American people.

“If it is the intent of affecting a regime change, then clearly it’s going to be a longer-term investment on the part of the United States,” Tillis said. “If it’s a recalibration on ending or eliminating the nuclear program, that needs to be short and done. So we just need clarity on it, because I’ve heard both of those sorts of objectives expressed over the past few days.”

But Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) dismissed the idea that the Trump administration needed a more coherent explanation for going to war against Iran.

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“The reason you’re hearing so many reasons [for the war] is the varied threats this regime presents,” he said on CNN.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, Congress passed a law attempting 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.

The House and Senate will both hold votes to block military action against Iran under that statute this week, but they’re both likely to fail due to bipartisan opposition (At least seven House Democrats have indicated they will oppose the effort). Even if they succeed, Trump could simply veto them.

“I think the administration is in compliance with the War Powers statute,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who voted in favor of limiting hostilities against Venezuela earlier this year, told reporters on Monday.

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Only a few Republicans contend Trump has overstepped his authority in launching the war. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has suggested he’d vote to end the war, as has Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). And Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) has also complained about Congress being left out of the decision to attack, but he hasn’t said outright he’d vote to rein in the administration.

Immediately after hostilities started, Massie said on social media he opposed the war and that it was a betrayal of Trump’s “America First” slogan. He said he would work with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), his Democratic partner on forcing the Trump administration to release the Epstein files, to force lawmakers to vote on a war powers resolution.

“The Constitution requires a vote, and your Representative needs to be on record as opposing or supporting this war,” Massie said.