Washington, D.C. – The US Senate is expected to hold an initial vote on a resolution to stop US President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, and top Democrat Chuck Schumer said he fears “now more than ever” that the administration is planning to deploy troops on the ground.
The procedural vote scheduled for Wednesday represents the first time that American lawmakers will go on record about their position on the war that the United States and Israel began on Saturday and has since seen Iran’s retaliation spread across the Middle East.
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The vote will determine whether the House will move forward with further debate on the resolution and a final vote, or whether any effort to assert congressional authority over the Trump administration’s military actions will be quickly thwarted. A separate measure is expected to come up for an initial vote in the U.S. House of Representatives tomorrow.
Speaking from the Senate floor, US Democrats condemned what they described as shifting justifications for the war and why the US needed to immediately strike Iran.
The House’s top Democrat, Schumer, described Trump as a president willing to quickly change his narrative, untethered by evidence or his past positions.
“Everything that occurs to him, he says it immediately. One day he chooses a plan and the next day he chooses the opposite. He doesn’t think it through, he doesn’t check the facts,” he said.
“You’re surrounded by yes men; this is dangerous,” Schumer said, adding that recent administration briefings had not provided “any clarity” about its ultimate goals and timeline.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the operation had just begun and that more U.S. assets were being sent to the region.
Schumer said the statement showed that “it’s clear that they are expanding the war… and I fear now more than ever that we are going to put troops on the ground, and that is precisely what the American people fear.”
Comparison to the invasion of Iraq in 2003
For his part, Democrat Dick Durbin highlighted the variety of reasons that the Trump administration has given to launch the war, while presenting little concrete evidence to support the various claims.
Trump has suggested that Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear program, which he said was “destroyed” in attacks last year; has suggested that Iran was seeking to develop a long-range missile to attack the United States; His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told reporters that Israel, a close US ally, was planning to attack Iran, which would likely lead to retaliation against US assets in the region; Trump has said that Iran was the one planning an imminent attack on Israel.
Most persistent across all the messaging is that the Trump administration has sought to frame the entirety of Iran’s actions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution as posing an immediate threat.
Many American constitutional scholars have long maintained that presidential powers under Article Two of the U.S. Constitution are limited to using the military for self-defense in response to immediate threats to the country, beyond which congressional approval is needed.
Under international law, the concept of “imminence” is also important in determining whether an attack on a sovereign country is legal.
“Let me tell you my experience from being here voting to go to war in Iraq: It’s a lot easier to get into a war than it is to get out of it,” Durbin said. “We knew at the time that there was a possibility of a war larger than a simple invasion, and it did… for nine years.”
Republicans defend Trump
Wednesday’s vote is the start of an uphill battle for supporters of the war powers resolution.
Republicans hold slim majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and the party has largely united around Trump’s message, even as influential members of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement have increasingly expressed their dismay.
Democrats and independents who are part of the party hold 47 seats in the Senate, compared to 53 for Republicans. At least one Democrat, John Fetterman, has said he will oppose the resolution, while one Republican, Rand Paul, is co-sponsoring it.
That means all remaining Democrats and four Republicans would have to vote to limit Trump’s powers. The math is equally challenging in the House, where Democrats hold 214 seats to Republicans’ 218.
Speaking from the Senate floor, Republican John Barrasso said, “Democrats would rather obstruct President Trump than destroy Iran’s domestic nuclear program.”
“Trump communicated our objectives within hours of the first attack: destroy Iran’s missile industry, and that includes their missiles, their launchers and the production-capable missiles they were amassing, destroy Iran’s navy, destroy Iran’s terrorist network, prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“President Trump acted absolutely within the constitutional powers of Article Two to achieve these goals,” he said.
Why does it matter?
Even if supporters of the war powers vote manage to achieve majority support in both the House and Senate, the resolution would still be vetoed by Trump.
Lawmakers would then need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override Trump’s veto, a much higher barrier to overcome.
Still, advocates have long argued that requiring votes on war powers forces lawmakers to engage on the issue and gives voters the ability to send messages to their elected officials about the war, and early polls show disappointing approval of Trump’s attacks.
“Votes and debates on the Iran War Powers Resolution are essential because they force accountability,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director of Middle East policy at the Friends of National Legislation Committee, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC.
“By adopting the measure, members of Congress are going on the record, shedding light on the administration’s actions and forcing necessary concessions to be made,” he told Al Jazeera.
El-Tayyab said the pending vote has already increased pressure on the administration to provide more information to Congress, pointing to a handful of Republicans who have expressed skepticism.
“This shows that the debate is not abstract politics,” El-Tayyab said. “It’s our government exercising its war powers with transparency and vigilance.”
