The trauma of America’s post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan was evident in Washington on Sunday as Americans reckoned with the implications of Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Across the political spectrum, varying factions unified under the banner of opposition to the kind of nation-building ground assault that defined America’s two wars launched by the Bush administration.
It is the only area of agreement between a faction of progressives and pro-Trump paleoconservatives who opposed the U.S. becoming involved in what up until now had been an Israeli military campaign and their opponents, a waning neoconservative faction in Washington which has called for further escalation in the form of strikes against other facilities and targeted assassinations of Iranian political and military leadership.
Sunday morning, the Trump administration publicly leaned towards the former group. Three top administration officials, Trump’s vice president, Defense Secretary and Secretary of State, spoke to journalists and urged Iranian leaders to choose against responding to the U.S. strike. Pledging that the U.S. was not seeking to topple Iran’s government, the trio left open an off-ramp as Vance claimed: “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
But both Democrats and Republican opponents of military force against Iran were smarting after Saturday night’s attacks, and many cast doubt on the U.S.’s ability to avoid what Senator Jim Risch, one of the administration’s defenders, said would be another “forever war”.
A number of Democrats urged more of their party to sign on to a resolution aimed at reining in the president’s war powers. The resolution’s lone Republican supporter, Rep. Thomas Massie, called on his party to do the same while condemning the influence of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, in a pair of interviews.
“MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER,” wrote Trump on Truth Social, in a lengthy post against Massie.
But for Democrats, the bombing of Iran represented an issue where common ground could be found. “This is a defining moment for the Democratic party. We need to stand against war with Iran,” warned one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, Rep. Ro Khanna.
Rep. Adam Smith, one of the party’s more centrist members who voted for the Iraq War in 2002, released a lengthy statement on Saturday for Trump’s refusal to seek congressional authorization for the strikes. He also warned against the kind of Iraq-style intervention he once supported: “The path that the President has chosen risks unleashing a wider war in the region that is both incredibly unpredictable and treacherous.”
The effort to rein in Trump’s military powers gained Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s support on Saturday as well. A strong supporter of Israel, Schumer nonetheless accused the administration of making “erratic threats” and having “no strategy”.
“The danger of wider, longer, and more devastating war has now increased,” added the Senate Democratic leader.
On the right, conservative supporters of the president who opposed Israel’s sudden military strikes — which occurred during the first U.S-Iran talks in years — were furious and worried about the future of the White House’s domestic agenda.
Former congressman Matt Gaetz, speaking with . Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on his OANN show, accused Israel of seeking “regime change” in Iran. He also tore into the Netanyahu government, accusing the prime minister of trying to avoid his own electoral defeat by getting the U.S. involved in his war and attacked Israel over the alleged existence of its own nuclear weapons program.
Steve Bannon, writing on Gettr, derided Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for claiming Sunday that the U.S. still sought peace with Iran.
“Guys, please run this by [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” he quipped.
Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative, warned that it was now going to be extremely difficult for Trump to back the U.S. out of what it had started.
“Goal posts. Instantly moved,” Mills wrote as he reacted to calls for further strikes reportedly made on Israeli media. “They’re going to keep asking Trump to do much more, forever, until he or another American president Says No.”
“The goal posts will be moved until morale collapses,” he added: “Every drop of juice is squeezed from Trump’s political capital.”
Even those who defended the administration’s involvement in the Israeli military campaign were hesitant to endorse the kind of foreign military footprint that America sustained during the so-called War on Terror.
Risch, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the president’s “decisive action” in his own statement after previously writing in May that the administration should insist on “full dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program”, including civilian enrichment, during now-scuttled negotiations.
“This is Israel’s war not our war,” the senator said. “This is not the start of a forever war. There will not be American boots on the ground in Iran.”
