A Democratic Senator Has Introduced a Resolution to Prevent War with Iran

It raises the question of whether Congress will intervene if military tensions escalate.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) speaks at the confirmation hearing of Mark T. Esper to be the Secretary of Defense on July 16, 2019. Stefani Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a resolution on Friday to prevent a war with Iran in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s decision to kill the nation’s top military leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani—which threw a match into the combustible relationship between the United States and Iran.

“The president does not have the authority for a war with Iran,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Friday. “If he plans a large increase in troops and potential hostility over a longer time, the administration will require congressional approval and the approval of the American people.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted that a new war should be approved by Congress.

“We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago Friday. “We did not take action to start a war.”

But the president has escalated tensions with Iran, starting with his decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal. And experts have warned that war is a possibility. “Any spark in the region could set off this fire,” Joe Cirincione, a nuclear weapons policy expert and former adviser to the State Department, told Mother Jones this summer.

President Donald Trump’s rushed decision to execute Soleimani appears to have been made with little preparation for the fallout from the decision—the threat of war and destabilization in the Middle East that kept the last two presidents from killing the dangerous military leader. Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security gathered on Thursday and Friday to game out how Iran might follow through on its promise of “forceful revenge,” including the possibility of cyber attacks. The US urged all American citizens in Iraq, where Soleimani was killed along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia commander and government official, to leave the country. The Pentagon will deploy an additional 3,000 troops to the Middle East to help secure the region. 

Saturday brought reports of a second airstrike in Iraq which allegedly blew up two military vehicles and may have killed five people, though the United States says it is not responsible.

It may be up to Congress to put the breaks on an escalating exchange of blows that threatens to become a new war in the Middle East. Kaine’s war-powers resolution would force the Senate to debate and vote on whether to stop the increase in hostilities until the administration receives approval from Congress. But even if the Senate and House passed the resolution, Trump could still veto it.

“Our country has, quite self-consciously, given one person, the President, an enormous sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war,” Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department lawyer under President George W. Bush, tweeted Friday. “That is our system: one person decides.” 

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate