Democrats and Republicans alike stretched out the process of voting on the Iran war, but antiwar advocates insist the vote still matters.
Better late than never. Both chambers of Congress eventually approved a war powers resolution on Tuesday aimed at ending the U.S. involvement in Iran, coming nearly three months after the fighting had ceased, and a week after the United States and Iran had reached a peace memorandum. The Senate cleared the measure on its tenth attempt, with four Republicans backing it while the principal war hawks Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) and Dave McCormick (R–Pa.) were absent for the vote.
Even though active hostilities had already wound down, President Donald Trump attacked the resolution for curbing his powers. He posted on Truth Social that the vote was the “poorly timed and meaningless” move by the “Dumocrats” and the “Four Republican Losers,” and claimed it signaled to “the Number One Sponser [sic] of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the Enemy.”
The lengthy delay in securing a war powers vote wasn’t merely the result of congressional inertia. Although Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) backed it from the outset and Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) kept her pledge to vote for the measure after the 60-day mark—the War Powers Act traditionally requires the president to obtain congressional authorization within 60 days of a conflict—it ultimately took longer for Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (R–La.) to change their positions.
Moreover, Democratic leaders pursued subtler strategies intended to stall a war powers resolution, aiming to sidestep a heated political confrontation.
“Republicans didn’t want to stand up to Trump, and the ones who got this over the top were those who had lost their primaries; Democratic leadership cooperated with Republicans, likely to shield their own members who didn’t want to vote against [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] but who eventually saw the writing on the wall and voted for the resolution,” says Etan Mabourakh, national organizing manager at the National Iranian American Council, a nonprofit diaspora organization.
Before the war began, Democratic leadership privately discouraged Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) from joining with libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) to introduce a resolution aimed at preventing Trump from striking Iran. They eventually agreed to schedule a vote in the first week of March, which happened to be a few days after Trump had started the conflict. The Khanna–Massie resolution collapsed as Democrats defected, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D–N.J.) attempted to replace it with his own measure granting Trump a month to end the war.
Meanwhile, House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D–N.Y.) refused to compel a floor vote on any war powers resolution for the initial 60 days, telling Drop Site News on March 27 that “we can’t win. When you see me put a vote on the floor, that means we’re going to win.” He eventually consented to bring a vote in mid-April, but as it happened, the attempt failed by a single vote, with four Republicans abstaining.
In May, when Meeks believed he had the necessary backing, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) called an early recess, delaying the vote by several more weeks.
It’s important to note that the war enjoys far less support among the general public than it does inside Congress. The conflict began with only a relatively small segment of Americans supporting it, and sentiment only soured from there. A CBS News poll recently found that just 31 percent of Americans thought the war was worth fighting, while 78 percent want to end it now.
“While some may assume Democrats waited until the war ended to pass this, activists actually pressed Democrats to speed up the votes, and the war’s disastrous conduct and economic consequences pushed the timeline forward,” one staffer at an antiwar organization involved in the legislation told Reason on condition of anonymity.
He adds that the struggle to secure the resolution proved valuable because it gave “doves within the administration, to the extent they exist, more leverage, more talking points, and greater ability to tell Trump that now is the time to wrap things up to avoid an embarrassing clash with Congress over an unpopular war.”
Mabourakh meanwhile argues that the resolution matters because it helps to “prevent Trump from backsliding into this one again.” Trump has threatened to reopen the conflict if Iran does not concede to his terms, though for the moment peace talks appear to be progressing.
And the contest in Congress isn’t finished. Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Va.) is pressing for a version with more robust, legally binding language that would require a two-thirds sum to override a presidential veto. If Congress mirrored public opinion, it would pass decisively—but the past half-year makes clear that Congress doesn’t always follow that pattern.
