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Donald Trump’s failure to build a case with the US public for striking Iran and then going ahead apparently without even alerting Congress’s key national security experts – the so-called “gang of eight” – has fuelled fierce domestic criticism of the military action against the Islamic Republic on Saturday.
Belying the gravity of Saturday’s attacks, the president spent just three minutes of Tuesday’s State of the Union address trying to explain why the need to act against a regime that had been a strategic foe for decades had suddenly become so urgent and whose nuclear facilities he claimed to have “obliterated” in previous strikes last June.
The recent precipitous buildup of what Trump called a “vast armada” in the region aimed against Iran starkly contrast with the long steady drum-beat to war with Iraq in 2003 under President George W Bush, who publicly and repeatedly made the case – ultimately disproved – that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Against that backdrop, condemnation on Saturday was swift, amid protests that the strikes breached the 1973 war powers resolution mandating congressional approval.
Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, accused the president of pre-empting a Senate vote scheduled for next week on a motion he has sponsored with the Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul. He called for Congress’s urgent return to address the issue.
Asked by NPR how much notice the Trump administration had given Congress, Kaine said: “Zero. The evidence suggests that the secretary of state called the speaker of the House, and that was it. We did not receive notice.
“The White House knew that I had a war powers resolution scheduled for vote by the Senate early next week. I assume they wanted to try to rush the initiation of an illegal war before Congress had a chance to vote on it.”
The 1973 act – passed in the wake of the Vietnam war and designed to rein in a president’s ability to embark on military adventures without authorization – demands consultation with Congress and 48-hours notification for troop deployments. It also imposes a 60-day limit on unauthorized engagements.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, called on Congress to return and for the administration to brief senators in a classified briefing and public testimony.
“The administration has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat,” Schumer said in a statement. “Confronting Iran’s malign regional activities, nuclear ambitions, and harsh oppression of the Iranian people demands American strength, resolve, regional coordination, and strategic clarity. Unfortunately, President Trump’s fitful cycles of lashing out and risking wider conflict are not a viable strategy.
Mark Warner, a senator from Virginia and vice-chair of the select committee on intelligence, called the strikes “a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East”.
David Janovsky, of the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight (Pogo), said: “The constitution is clear: Congress has the sole authority to declare war. The president’s announcement today that the US has conducted military strikes in Iran without congressional approval is yet another flagrant abuse of power by this administration. Significant military actions should have more than the sole backing of a single leader – that’s why the constitution requires the people’s representatives to make these decisions.”
Kaine – a member of the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees – said the war powers act could be invoked even after hostilities began, thus justifying his call for Congress to return immediately.
Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, likewise condemned the action as “illegal”.
“I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war,” he wrote on social media. “Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people.
“We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.”
Thomas Massie, the maverick Republican representative from Kentucky – who is a frequent Trump critic – echoed Kaine’s theme in condemning the strikes as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress”.
Massie had a joint resolution with the Democrat, Ro Khanna, on war powers which shadows Kaine’s and Paul’s Senate motion and is scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives next week.
Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called the strikes “a war of choice with no strategic endgame”.
In a particularly striking response, the rightwing broadcaster, Tucker Carlson – a strident supporter of Trump’s Maga movement – excoriated the actions as “disgusting and evil”, the journalist Jonathan Karl, posted on Instagram.
Carlson’s comments reflected a prominent view among many of Trump’s supporters that his vaunted “America first” foreign policy should preclude open-ended military entanglements such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the president himself has repeatedly criticized as a mistake.
But Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator and staunch Trump loyalist, praised the strikes in ecstatic terms as a historical turning point.
“The end of the largest state sponsor of terrorism is upon us. God bless President Trump, our military and our allies in Israel,” he posted.
In a separate post, Graham wrote: “My mind is racing with the thought that the murderous ayatollah’s regime in Iran will soon be no more. The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us.”
Addressing members of the US military, he added: “If you are injured or fall, I believe with all my heart that your sacrifice makes your country and the world a better and safer place. This moment is why you chose to serve.”
