by Thomas Breen
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro criticized President Donald Trump Saturday for launching a war against Iran without first seeking Congressional approval — and warned that pursuing regime change in the Middle Eastern country could prove to be a long, costly, and bloody affair.
“I worry about a prolonged war,” she said.
DeLauro, New Haven’s longtime Congresswoman and the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, offered that response during a press briefing Saturday at 10:45 a.m. in the hallway outside her office at 59 Elm St.
She spoke up hours after the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched wide-ranging attacks on cities across Iran with the goal of topping the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. By Saturday afternoon, the Israeli military announced that it had killed several top Iranian military officials, including, potentially, Khamenei.
The attacks prompted swift backlash from Congressional Democrats, including in Connecticut.
“War must always be a last resort and never a first choice,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said in an email statement sent out at 9:56 a.m. “The Trump Administration seems to be engaging in a war of choice that rejects opportunities for diplomacy. A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable and Iran’s malign activities throughout the region pose a severe danger, but President Trump has failed to explain to the American people his objectives, end game, or exit strategy – risking another forever war.”
Blumenthal called for Congress to come back into session, “demand answers on behalf of Americans,” and then vote on a war powers resolution.
During her remarks on Elm Street Saturday, DeLauro also repeated calls for Congress to take up a war powers resolution regarding the U.S. government’s attack on Iran.
She focused her criticism on the Trump administration acting without Congressional approval. “The Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war,” she said.
DeLauro slammed the president for providing “no justification for this action,” “no description of this action,” and no indication of “what the imminent threat was.” In the months, weeks, and days before Saturday, the Trump administration appeared to be acting in pursuit of “nuclear deterrence.” With Saturday’s attack, “all of a sudden, that [goal] has shifted to regime change.”
DeLauro said that Saturday’s attack opens up a world of uncertainty for the future of the U.S. military’s involvement in this region. “There is no indication of what comes next. What is the day after?”
There’s no question that the Iranian regime is a “leading supporter of terrorism,” DeLauro continued, “but I don’t believe that this action diminishes that risk in any way.”
Instead, she said, it will likely “raise energy prices.” The president, she said, “should be focused at home on [the] cost of living.”
In a three-minute video posted to the social media site X at 11:16 a.m., U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy offered a similar critique — albeit in a sharper register.
“Trump’s attacks on Iran are just wildly illegal” and “a mistake of epic scale,” he said.
“In America,” Murphy wrote in a post accompanying the video, “we don’t allow one doddering, self obsessed old man to waste our money on a dangerous, disastrous overseas war.”
Murphy said that Trump has learned nothing from “decades of U.S. military disaster in the Middle East,” and appears to have spent “not a single minute” studying all the lives lost during U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also said that, even if the U.S. and Israeli militaries are successful in achieving regime change, “what is likely to emerge from the rubble is not an Iranian inclusive democracy,” but instead a government that is “more repressive,” more anti-Israel, more anti-U.S., and composed of the remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump is a “would-be dictator who doesn’t care what we think,” Murphy said.
Nevertheless, he said, the American public has been “crystal clear. They don’t want to be drafted into a totally unnecessary war of choice.”
Murphy said that Congress needs to be called back into session right away so that they can debate legislation to approve or deny the president’s war in Iran.
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