Democrats Unveil War Powers Resolution That Gives Trump Leeway to Bomb Iran

Amid heavy criticism over President Donald Trump’s unprovoked strikes on Iran, several top ranking Democrats have introduced a war powers resolution that effectively greenlights military action against the country, while posturing over a seemingly feigned opposition to Trump’s operation.

The resolution, introduced this week, orders Trump to remove U.S. troops from any hostilities against Iran — except for troops involved in defending “an ally or partner of the United States from imminent attack.”

This is a major exception, with the phrase “imminent attack” lending legitimacy to the idea of a “preemptive strike” — akin to the Bush doctrine used to justify the U.S.’s disastrous invasion of Iraq after widespread lies about weapons of mass destruction.

The legislation was introduced by Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York), Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) and Intelligence Select Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut). All three lawmakers have previously spoken of the supposed importance of protecting Israel from Iranian military action.

It serves as a competing resolution to two war powers resolutions introduced in Congress that have sought to bar Trump from bypassing Congress to authorize acts of war against Iran.

Both resolutions, by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) in the Senate and Representatives Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (D-California) in the House, assert Congress’s power to authorize strikes. They both also contain carve-outs for “imminent” attacks against the U.S., though, without mention of an ally.

This places Meeks, Smith and Himes’s resolution further to the right of the resolution introduced by a Republican in the House. The lawmakers didn’t offer a definitive reason for introducing competing legislation — but did explicitly mention the supposed danger of an “imminent attack” on Israel in a statement about the legislation.

With the laundering of propaganda, an “imminent attack,” especially against an ally, could mean anything, including the idea that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon that it would use to attack Israel. Top-ranking U.S. officials have outright admitted that there was no evidence of this, but Trump dismissed that testimony off-hand. As Trump was weighing whether or not to strike last week, corporate news outlets reworded the intelligence community’s findings to make them sound more uncertain about Iran’s goals.

It also plays into Israel’s perpetual threats of going to war with Iran, with Israeli leaders having said for decades now that Iran is on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“There’s no upside to advancing a competing War Powers Resolution. It’s not just unnecessary — it’s actively counterproductive,” Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser for Demand Progress, told The Intercept. “There’s still time to reconcile this on the House side, and we hope an agreement can be reached to enable a strong vote with the best possible language.”

Others have pointed out that the resolution is seemingly worded specifically to contradict itself.

“This Resolution has a loophole so big you could fly a B-2 through it,” said A New Policy, a PAC founded last year by former U.S. officials Josh Paul and Tariq Habash, who resigned in protest of the U.S.’s pro-Israel policies.

“The explicit carve-out to defend ‘an ally or partner of the United States from imminent attack…’ divides the existing caucus against further U.S. military action in Iran, and appears worded in a way that it would permit pre-emptive U.S. attacks against Iranian targets even if they are not preparing to attack American assets, which defeats much of the purpose of the Resolution,” the group went on.