The House on Thursday narrowly passed a resolution to halt U.S. military action in Iran, but the 214-208 vote carried no force of law and left President Donald Trump free to keep escalating a war that has already killed 18 service members, driven up fuel prices and kept the Strait of Hormuz largely closed.
Who Holds the Trigger
The House vote came just before the Senate narrowly rejected a similar resolution, 47-49. Democrats forced both votes, knowing full well they were largely symbolic, because the real power still sits with the president and the war machine he commands. The resolutions were meant as a warning to Trump for the second time as the conflict drags on and lawmakers in both parties question his administration’s endgame.
Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the Democrat who led the House resolution, said the war has had “no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal.” That’s the kind of sentence Congress should’ve been asking before the bombs started falling, not after the damage was already done. The House resolution passed after a handful of Republicans voted with Democrats to end the war, but the vast majority of Republicans in both chambers voted to back the war and cede congressional war powers to Trump.
Joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes launched the war in late February. A tenuous ceasefire deal was reached in April, but Trump declared the ceasefire was “over” earlier this month. He has insisted that continued U.S. attacks against Iran do not mean a return to war or long-term action. After the first House vote to halt the war in early June, he posted on social media that it was “unpatriotic” and “meaningless.”
The Costs Land Below
The people paying for this mess aren’t the ones making the calls. Continued American airstrikes are happening even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who led the Senate effort on Thursday, said, “We are in this new escalatory phase where Americans have been killed, and Americans are experiencing the rising costs — I think it’s important that people be held accountable.” He added, “And this is a very unpopular war.” That’s the plain truth the political class keeps circling around while the costs keep moving downward.
As the House debated the resolution Wednesday evening, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., read out the names of 18 service members killed since the war began. “To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for,” Mast said. “Their sacrifice was not meaningless. This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America.”
Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the panel, said presidents are supposed to make the case to Congress. The service members who died made the ultimate sacrifice for “an illegal unauthorized war that the American people don’t want,” Meeks said.
The Theater of Oversight
The White House responded with the usual imperial shrug. A statement of administration policy issued Thursday said the resolutions don’t have the force of law and encouraged lawmakers to vote against them. “The President has the Constitutional authority to defend the United States and our citizens from the danger posed by the Iranian regime,” the policy statement said. “This requires the ability to act decisively to ensure it never obtains a nuclear weapon.”
That’s the language of concentrated power protecting itself. Congress can vote, object, posture, and issue warnings, but the administration says it can keep acting anyway. Trump made the political threat even clearer after the June House vote, calling the four Republicans who voted with Democrats “GRANDSTANDERS!” and saying they should be “ashamed of themselves.” “They would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories,” he said.
When the Senate passed a war powers resolution on Iran for the first time in June, Trump called the four Republicans who voted for it “losers” and then reprimanded them at a Senate GOP luncheon the next day. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of those Republicans, said afterward that he had clashed with Trump over the issue. He said he told Trump directly that he needed to give more details to the public about the conflict. “This was supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months,” Cassidy said. “Our original objectives have not been achieved.”
Cassidy later told reporters that Trump argued back, and he told the president he wouldn’t change his vote until he got a briefing. The White House later relented, giving Cassidy a one-on-one meeting, and the Louisiana Republican changed his vote in a late-night do-over vote before the Senate left for a two-week recess. Cassidy voted against the resolution again on Thursday.
Democrats said they would keep forcing Republicans to vote on the issue. “If Donald Trump won’t listen to the people and end this war then Congress must,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. But the votes themselves show the trap: a legislature trying to claw back authority it already handed over, while the war keeps moving and the people keep absorbing the damage.
Most Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the situation with Iran, according to recent polling. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in July found that few Americans think the war in Iran has been worth fighting, and most aren’t confident that the U.S. military action in Iran and negotiations to end the war will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Only about two-thirds of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the situation in Iran, according to the poll. Most Republicans, about 6 in 10, think the war has been worth fighting and are confident that the military action and ensuing negotiations will prevent Iran from development nuclear weapons, but a sizable share — about one-third — are unconvinced.
The numbers don’t stop the airstrikes. They don’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And they don’t bring back the 18 dead.