After briefing, lawmakers disagree on whether Iran threat to U.S. was imminent

Republicans and Democrats remain split on whether Congress needs to authorize President Trump’s military operation in Iran, after an initial classified briefing on the matter Monday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed top party and committee leaders from Congress on Monday. 

The group will be back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to hold separate briefings for all senators and all House members.

“The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy, particularly to naval assets,” Mr. Rubio told reporters before heading into the briefing.

He said Israel was planning action against Iran that would have led to retaliatory attacks, including on U.S. troops in the region.

“We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Mr. Rubio said, describing the operation as a “defense” in nature.

“Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and other Republicans echoed that assessment.

“If we had waited to respond before acting first, then those losses would have been far greater than if we had done what we did,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “I can guarantee you this, if we had not acted, if the president, the commander in chief, had not acted as he did, those same officials would have been hauled in here by members of Congress and asked them why in the world they waited, if they had exquisite intelligence, knowing that that would happen, if we would suffer such staggering losses, why did they not act to prevent it?

“So I am convinced that they did the right thing,” he said.

Democrats, however, maintained that there was not an imminent threat to the U.S. and that Congress should have been consulted.

Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he “shed no tears [for the] demise of the Iranian leadership,” but said the only imminent threat was to Israel, not the U.S.

“If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States then we are in uncharted territory,” he said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, said the rationale the Trump administration briefers provided for the strikes on Iran was largely what they’ve said in public about the threat of Iranian missile attacks on Americans in the region.

“We did not see all of the substantive support for that,” she said.

Democrats are planning to force votes in Congress this week on war powers resolutions that would block Mr. Trump from engaging in further military hostilities against Iran without congressional approval.

The war powers resolutions provide exceptions for the U.S. to defend itself, including its personnel and facilities abroad, from attack and to assist Israel and other allies in similar defensive measures.

Ms. Shaheen said she is not expecting much Republican support for the war powers resolution, but Democrats will continue to point out that Congress has the power to declare war.

“We also appropriate,” she said, suggesting Congress could use the power of the purse to assert its authority over U.S. military operations.

Mr. Warner said Congress has been “totally irrelevant because we’ve not used our power,” but said there is a “constitutional responsibility” for the president to come to Congress.

“This has been something that has been building up for months on end as this armada has come together,” he said. “And the idea that there is then not a constitutional responsibility for the president to come to Congress after he’s built up this fleet and — now not my words, his words — launched a war against Iran, anyone who argues otherwise hasn’t read the Constitution.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the war powers vote will give Congress a say, but he suggested Republicans will back Mr. Trump.

“What this administration has done is consistent with what previous administrations have done,” the South Dakota Republican said, noting that then-Presidents George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama launched similar attacks in the Middle East based on threats to national security.

The Trump administration believed “that not just the nuclear [threat] but the ballistic missile threat that the Iranians possess is something that threatened our troops in the region, and obviously our allies in the region as well,” Mr. Thune said.