Lawmakers vote to curb Trump war on Iran ahead of similar effort on Lebanon
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Yasmine El-Sabawi
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Thu, 06/04/2026 - 17:20
The move is a significant bipartisan rebuke, but remains symbolic
US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib speaks during an event marking the one-year anniversary of the 'Block the Bombs Act', on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on 4 June 2026 (Kylie Cooper/Reuters)
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The US House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 215-208 to curb President Donald Trump's war-making authority on Iran until he seeks congressional approval.
Four Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the measure, including Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who will depart the lower chamber in January after he was defeated last month in the most expensive Republican primary ever by a candidate with backing from pro-Israel lobbying groups.
It's worth noting that more than a dozen Republicans were absent from the House on Wednesday, meaning they did not vote at all.
The move still stands as a significant bipartisan rebuke of Trump's largely unpopular joint war with Israel on Iran, but will have to now be taken up by the Senate, where it has a good chance of getting through, given the Senate had previously advanced a similar resolution.
But as he did in 2019, when lawmakers in both chambers decided to invoke the War Powers Act and demand he seek their authorisation for US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen, Trump will almost certainly veto the measure when it lands on his desk.
Back then, lawmakers were unable to override that veto with a two-thirds majority.
"Trump's war has failed to accomplish the Trump administration’s stated goals with respect to Iran. If anything, it has pushed a diplomatic resolution of Iran’s nuclear program further away," Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement following the vote.
"The war has undermined the credibility of US negotiations and allowed Iran to demonstrate its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Americans are paying 50 percent more at the gas pump since the war began and footing the bill for billions per week in costs for a war they overwhelmingly oppose."
The president of the National Iranian American Council, Jamal Abdi, called the successful vote a "clear and unmistakable" signal from the majority of US lawmakers.
"President Trump needs to stop dithering and bring this disastrous war to a close before more harm is done. Otherwise, more harm to the nation and more political blowback will follow," he said in a statement.
Lebanon
Key to Iran agreeing to any deal for nuclear concessions and the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz - as Trump demands - is a ceasefire in Lebanon.
On Thursday, Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib will be forcing a vote on her war powers resolution to end US participation in what she called "the genocidal war on Lebanon", given Washington's logistical and intelligence support to Israel, including the sale of weapons.
Lebanon-Israel ceasefire plans in doubt following Hezbollah's rejection
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"Since early March, Israel’s military has murdered more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, including 128 paramedics and healthcare workers. The Israeli military has focused on bombing ambulances, medical facilities, and homes - forcibly displacing 20 percent of the population," she said in a statement.
"These are all war crimes."
This comes as the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee on Thursday examines next year's US military budget, which has come under scrutiny for a proposal that would effectively merge US and Israeli weapons development projects, technology, and research efforts.
A New Policy, a think tank with a lobbying arm founded by two former Biden administration officials who resigned over US support of Israel's war on Gaza, said last week it "strongly opposes" section 224 of the budget.
"This approach exposes sensitive US capabilities to counterintelligence risk, normalizes technologies developed in contexts of occupation and civilian harm, disadvantages US defense companies' ability to compete with Israeli competitors, deepens US legal and reputational exposure without clear strategic necessity, and aims to hide continuing US military support to Israel from Congressional and public transparency."
It's unlikely, however, that Republican lawmakers who do not wish to run afoul of Trump would take into consideration back-to-back successful war powers resolutions when it comes to long-term military support for Israel.
Former President Joe Biden once said that if Israel did not exist, the US would have to create it, suggesting that Israel carries out US interests in the region.
What the law says
The 1973 War Powers Act allows any lawmaker to introduce a resolution to withdraw US armed forces from a conflict not authorised by Congress. The legislative branch, which acts as the country’s purse, is supposed to be the one that declares war - not the executive branch.
"There are some things about the Constitution [that] are not clear [but] this point is crystal, crystal clear," Chris Edelson, a constitutional scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, previously told Middle East Eye.
On the cusp of reining in Trump, House Republicans cancel war powers vote
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Since the 9/11 attacks in particular, the foggy nature of the so-called "war on terror" has enabled the White House to call the shots, especially as Washington has carried out air strikes in countries from Somalia to Pakistan without an official declaration of war.
The 1973 statute notably does make room for the president to take 60 days of military action before either formally ending hostilities, seeking authorisation from Congress, or requesting a 30-day extension. Edelson argued, however, that it is too "ambiguously worded" to be a law that supersedes the Constitution itself.
On 30 April, some three weeks after Pakistan brokered a ceasefire between the US and Iran, a US administration official told Reuters: "For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated."
It followed remarks at a Senate hearing by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who indicated that the 60-day war window for the president is automatically frozen when a ceasefire is called.
Democrats, and some Republicans, rejected that assessment.
Over the last week alone, the US launched three rounds of air strikes on Iran, which prompted a response against Washington's Gulf partners, culminating in an attack on Kuwait on Wednesday that destroyed an airport terminal, killed an Indian national, and wounded more than 60 other people.
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