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As President Donald Trump barrels toward a direct war with Iran, the most powerful Democrats in Congress are issuing statements that are at best tepid and confusing. At worst, they are cheering escalation.
Even with some Democrats on Capitol Hill pushing for a War Powers Resolution and other legislation to stop Trump from attacking without congressional approval, the Democratic Party’s most powerful politicians refuse to mount any meaningful opposition to a strike. Many outright favor direct U.S. involvement in yet another regime change war.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the most powerful Democrat in the Senate, where he is the minority leader, presents himself as a major opponent of Trump. As recently as June 15, for example, he boasted about his participation in the No Kings Day mass protest against Trump.
Yet when it comes to the prospect of a direct war with Iran, Schumer is not only supporting Trump, but less than three weeks ago was goading the administration to be “tough” on Iran and not make any “side deals” without Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval.
“The United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response,” he said in a follow-up statement released on June 13, after Israel attacked Iran. “The Iranian regime’s stated policy has long been to destroy Israel and Jewish communities around the world.”
Schumer did include a perfunctory nod to talks — “a strong, unrelenting diplomatic effort backed by meaningful leverage.” The “meaningful leverage” in question, however, is bombing Iran — something Schumer tacitly supports.
Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the most powerful Democrat in the House, responded to Israel’s attack with a toothless statement that was vaguely supportive of war and packed with every pro-Israel cliche in the book. “Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad,” he said. “It is clear that the Iranian regime poses a grave threat to the entire free world. There is no circumstance where Iran can be permitted to become a nuclear power.”
Jeffries, too, mentioned diplomacy, but with no urgency. “As soon as is practical, it is imperative to find a rigorous diplomatic path forward and avoid any situation where U.S. troops are put in harm’s way,” he said. As with Schumer, “diplomacy” is a box to be checked, a vague normative preference, but not a demand — and certainly not a requirement.
A host of powerful Democrats issued strikingly similar statements. They repeatedly reinforced every premise of Trump’s pending bombing campaign, namely the alleged imminent danger posed by Iran. This premise is undermined by U.S. intelligence assessments and leaks to both the Wall Street Journal and CNN, which suggest Iran hadn’t decided to make a bomb and would be three years away from producing one if it did.
If all of the statements look similar, it’s because, according to DropSite and the American Prospect, many members of Congress are simply copy and pasting approved language from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the flagship pro-Israel lobby group. These outlets found that, in statements on congressional websites and social media, nearly 30 members of Congress used nearly identical language about how they “stand with Israel” and another 35 gave their unequivocal support in similar terms but without the magic words.
Among the influential Democrats pledging their unflinching support for Israel was Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Like many others, Meeks hauled out a talking point about how “Israel has a right to defend itself” — meant to front-run any discussion of Israeli aggression by asserting the premise that any and all military action is inherently defensive. It’s a dubious premise in most contexts, but especially Orwellian in this one since Israel preemptively attacked Iran based on claims of an “imminent threat” in direct contradiction of US intelligence. Even if one thinks Israel has a “right to defend itself” in the abstract, under no neutral reading of international law is Israel doing so by bombing another country without legal basis to do so.
The decidedly unhelpful approaches by powerful Democrats don’t end there. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, influential members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively, both issued mealy-mouthed statements trying to split the baby between “diplomacy” rhetoric and reinforcing every pretense for U.S. involvement in Israel’s bombing of Iran.
Anti-Anti-War
These non-positions — or worse, positions in favor of unprovoked, almost certainly illegal war — are notable precisely because there are some lawmakers who are at least trying to do something to stop a direct, all-out conflict between the U.S. and Iran. According to the latest count by Prem Thakker, 37 members of Congress have thrown their weight behind some kind of effort to stop war. These fall into two camps. The first is a resolution in both the House and Senate that invokes the 1973 War Powers Act, which says that only Congress can declare war, a principle that has been routinely violated by U.S. presidents.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is leading this push in the Senate, where few cosponsors have signed on. (Someone with knowledge of the effort told us that the organizers aren’t accepting co-sponsors in a bid to gain bipartisan support first.) Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., are leading the sister effort in the House, and it has 28 supporters total, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. D-N.Y. A total of 27, or 12.7 percent, of House Democrats have lent the bill their support.
There is another effort afoot, too: the No War Against Iran Act that was already in motion before Israel attacked Iran on June 13, though it was introduced after the attacks began. The Senate bill, spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would prevent federal funds from being used for a war that’s not approved by Congress. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., are among its eight Senate supporters.
Democratic leaders, however, are leaving their colleagues out to dry. Schumer, for instance, declined to join Sanders’s bill as a cosponsor — despite having cosponsored the same effort in 2020.
This tacit and open support for Trump’s war aren’t limited to active leadership; the upper echelons of the party establishment have been noticeably silent.
Democratic elites by and large agree with both Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran and Trump’s direct involvement.
Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama haven’t publicly opposed Trump’s reckless threats and build-up to war with Iran. Obama, for example, has re-emerged into the spotlight — but made no mention of Iran or Trump’s push for war during a public appearance this week.
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — despite frequently criticizing Trump for his military parade, detainment of a U.S. senator, and anti-abortion policies — hasn’t spoken in opposition to a US war with Iran. And, likewise, 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, who has been speaking out against Trump, has yet to publicly criticize Trump’s build up to bombing Iran.
Surveying these responses — somewhere between muted disinterest and consent — there’s only one plausible conclusion: Democratic elites by and large agree with both Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran and Trump’s direct involvement in this potentially catastrophic regime change war.
It’s unlikely most Democratic hawks will come out in open support of an attack that carries such political risks; like with Iraq 20 years ago, things could quickly go off the rails. Yet, even as party leaders seek to burnish their credentials as the “resistance” to Trump, they’re tacitly, and sometimes openly, giving Trump a green light to lurch America into yet another open-ended war of choice.
