Arlington’s congressman and both of Virginia’s U.S. senators condemned today’s military strikes on Iran, calling the attack unconstitutional and demanding that Congress reconvene.
The U.S. and Israel launched a major attack on Iran overnight, with strikes hitting areas across the country including around the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. President Donald Trump, in a video announcing “major combat operations,” called on Iranians to “seize control of your destiny” by rising up against their government.
Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. U.S. embassies across the Middle East told staffers to shelter in place.
Rep. Don Beyer (D) called the strikes “not smart… not legal… not morally right, and… not in our national interest.”
“The President has not made the case for a conflict he himself calls ‘war’ to the country or to Congress, nor has he gotten congressional approval for such a step, which means this war is plainly illegal and unconstitutional,” Beyer said in a statement.
Beyer, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland under President Barack Obama — Switzerland is the protecting power for diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran — called for the House to immediately return to session and vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Beyer was among the first to cosponsor that resolution when it was introduced during last June’s Israel-Iran conflict.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, was more blunt.
“Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East?” Kaine said. “These strikes are a colossal mistake, and I pray they do not cost our sons and daughters in uniform and at embassies throughout the region their lives.”
Kaine called on the Senate to return to session and vote on his War Powers Resolution to block the use of U.S. forces in hostilities against Iran. Last June, the Senate voted on a similar resolution from Kaine that gained bipartisan support but did not receive enough votes to advance.
Sen. Mark Warner (D), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, raised concerns about the scope of the operation, which he said was “not limited to nuclear or missile infrastructure but extending to a broad set of targets, including senior Iranian leadership.”
“The American people have seen this playbook before — claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building,” Warner said. “The president owes the country clear answers: What is the objective? What is the strategy to prevent escalation? And how does this make Americans safer?”
Today’s strikes mark the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has used military force against Iran. Israeli and American strikes last June greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program, according to the Associated Press.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, said that though Iran is a “bad actor,” the president must nonetheless “seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war.”
Trump acknowledged there could be American casualties, saying “that often happens in war.” At least 57 people were reported killed at a girls’ school in southern Iran, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, and shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the capital of the United Arab Emirates killed one person.
The strikes came during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, weeks after a U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The U.N. Security Council said it would meet Saturday afternoon.
