WASHINGTON – Senior Trump administration officials told lawmakers in classified briefings Tuesday that they would expect an “overwhelming” and larger wave of military strikes against Iran in the coming days.
“This regime is dying. The amount of firepower we’re going to send within a day or two is going to be overwhelming,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key Trump ally and defense hawk who had been urging President Donald Trump to launch military strikes against Iran for months.
“What we are going to do in the next few days will be much greater than what it has been in the last few days. The Arabs are in the fight now, so stay tuned,” Graham continued. “What lies ahead for the remnants of the regime is going to be overwhelming. The liberation of Iran is within reach. The door to peace is about to open.”
Leaving the closed-door Senate briefing, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he learned that the scope of Operation Epic Fury is “very broad,” “evolving rapidly” and “really changing by the hour.”
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a former State Department official who also worked in national security roles in the Obama White House, confirmed that administration officials told lawmakers that a larger wave of attacks would target Iran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other administration briefers told members of Congress “that we should expect even stronger attacks in the future, which, again, is simply ominous for the protection of American citizens in the region,” Kim told reporters. “This is just the beginning of what several of them said was going to be a very long operation. This is a war. This is Iran’s war.”
Those comments were consistent with the message Rubio delivered to reporters just hours earlier.
The United States will “unleash” itself against Iran in “the coming hours and days,” Rubio, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters before Tuesday’s briefings.
Just a day earlier, he told reporters at the Capitol that “the hardest blows are yet to come.”
Rubio briefed House and Senate lawmakers Tuesday along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Both chambers are preparing to vote on resolutions to limit Trump’s ability to take additional military action in Iran. The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon, but the resolution is expected to fail given that nearly all 53 Republicans back Trump on the Iran issue. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only Republican who has suggested he will vote for the resolution, while Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a strong supporter of Israel, is expected to be the only Democrat to join Republicans and vote against it.
“I’m the only Democrat because I’m not afraid of my base,” Fetterman said.
Republican lawmakers said they did not get the impression from the briefings that the administration was preparing to put U.S. troops on the ground. But they reiterated that Trump is not ruling anything out.
“All the people who work for the president don’t rule out any of his options, and that’s a really good position to take,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R.N.D., a member of the Armed Services Committee.
“Depending on what happens in the future, I am not going to rule out any of my options. Every situation requires intelligence of the moment. But certainly, that would not be desirable,” he continued.
Across the Capitol, some House conservatives who were outspoken critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan said they did not want to see another “forever war” in Iran. Trump has said he expects the war to last four to five weeks, although it could last longer. “Whatever it takes,” he said Monday.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, a candidate for governor of South Carolina, said, “I don’t want a 20-year war, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives lost. And that’s why I think this can be done succinctly and surgically. I don’t want troops on the ground. That’s my number one concern: I don’t want troops on the ground.”
And Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said “my antenna starts to go up” the longer it goes on and if the U.S. puts troops on the ground.
However, several House and Senate Republicans who walked out of the briefings said they expected the White House to ask Congress for a supplemental funding package for Iran. They said they would support the request.
“Yes, absolutely, yes,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who spoke with Trump after the attacks on Iran began Saturday morning.
The initial joint US-Israeli strikes against Iran killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many of his top lieutenants and severely damaged much of the country’s key military capabilities.
But in the past 72 hours, Iran retaliated by attacking US embassies, consulates and other “soft” targets in allied nations in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the State Department urged thousands of Americans traveling or living in 14 countries in the region to leave immediately, despite flight cancellations and other travel restrictions.
Six US service members died in the operation. Four of them, all Army reservists who died when a drone attacked Kuwait, were publicly identified Tuesday night.
Kim, who was a civilian adviser during the war in Afghanistan, said he feared the Iranian regime could attack American civilians as Trump escalates his attacks on Tehran.
“It won’t just be our troops that will be under attack. We see the Iranian regime targeting our embassies, targeting some of these weaker targets that don’t have air defense systems,” Kim told reporters. “And we know that they have thousands of drones and other capabilities that have an enormous amount of lethal force. I’m very concerned about that.”
“The way Trump talks about the death of Americans is like, ‘Well, that’s what comes of war.’ No, no, it’s not inevitable. This was Trump’s election,” he said. “He chose to start this war and, as a result, he chose to put these Americans in danger.”
