‘WAR OF CHOICE’
The US and Israeli strikes, as well as Iranian retaliation, have sent shockwaves through multiple sectors, such as shipping, air travel and oil, amid warnings of rising energy costs and disruption to business in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway.
Three US service members have been killed, and another five were seriously wounded, in the first US casualties of the unfolding operations against Iran, the US military said on Sunday.
Trump justified the attack in part by pointing to the threat of an Iranian nuclear program that he had until recently claimed had been “obliterated” by US air strikes last June.
DEMOCRATS SAY IRAN ATTACK ILLEGAL
While Trump’s fellow Republicans largely fell in line behind the president, several Democratic lawmakers said the attack was illegal because only Congress has the right to declare war under the Constitution.
Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from Virginia, who was among the eight lawmakers briefed last week before the strikes, said the administration did not provide evidence of an imminent threat. Instead, Warner said, Trump started a “war of choice.”
“I saw no intelligence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of pre-emptive strike against the United States,” Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Warner and US Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, expressed concern that it could drag the United States into another long and messy conflict in the Middle East.
Khanna, who is helping lead an attempt in the House of Representatives to block further military action without congressional approval, said it was unclear how Iran would be governed following Khamenei’s death.
“Khamenei was a brutal dictator, but Americans are not safer today,” Khanna said. “The question is, ‘Is the country going to descend in civil war? Are billions of our dollars going to be spent there? Are American troops going to be at risk’?”
Lawmakers said they wanted to avoid a prolonged and costly conflict reminiscent of the Iraq War, which dragged on for years and claimed thousands of US lives.
Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, said he hopes US involvement in Iran can be completed within a month.
“It all depends on… whoever the new leader is in Iran,” Scott told Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “We’re going to finish this, and if we don’t, we’ll be doing this in five years, in 10 years.”