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Top congressional Democrats called on Donald Trump to justify his willingness to go to war with Iran after a classified briefing led them to believe the US is ready to launch a new attack.
The lawmakers did not disclose what they learned at a briefing Tuesday from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, but said the U.S. president should give the American public an immediate explanation about his war aims.
Top Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said, “It is important and the administration needs to make its case to the American people.”
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said after the briefing that Trump needed to justify his position.
“The President said that Iran’s nuclear program was completely destroyed last year as a result of actions taken by the Administration,” Jeffries said after the briefing.
“So if it were indeed true, what is the urgency of it at this point? That’s an open question, and the American people need real clarification,” Jeffries said hours before Trump’s State of the Union address.
The briefing came as the US continued to increase its military assets in the region and added two more guided-missile destroyers in recent days.
Trump has deployed a “huge armada” to the Middle East, in the largest naval buildup in the region since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The assembled force now consists of 18 warships, including two aircraft carriers, 13 destroyers and three littoral combat ships. More destroyers are expected to be sent, a person familiar with the matter said.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, Washington’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, was in port in Souda Bay, Crete, on Tuesday, according to satellite imagery. According to the Navy, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was in the North Arabian Sea.
The US has also significantly increased the number of its warplanes in the region and added more THAAD and Patriot air defense systems, which the US used to protect its assets and those of its allies against Iranian ballistic and small missile attacks during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he appreciated Tuesday’s “consultation” from the White House, but added that “it’s up to the president to decide what our country’s goals are, what our country’s interests are and how we will protect American interests in the region.”
“Maybe we’ll hear it tonight, but if we don’t hear it tonight, we need to hear it very, very, very soon,” he said.
US negotiators plan to resume talks with Iran in Geneva on Thursday, their third meeting in recent weeks. But Trump and his allies have expressed frustration over Tehran’s refusal to commit to stopping all uranium enrichment, including civilian use. The US President has threatened that “bad things” will happen to the Islamic Republic if it fails to reach a deal.
Fox News host Brett Baier wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that the president told him, “Iran desperately wants a deal … but it cannot say the sacred phrase, ‘We will not build nuclear weapons.'”
Republican Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox and Friends Earlier in the day he said the US “does not have to make any offer (to Iran); our offer could be that you meet our demands or we bomb you.”
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt on Tuesday reiterated Trump’s claim that the United States had “destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program in June when it joined Israel’s 12-day war with the Islamic Republic, but said Tehran could try to reestablish that program. “And the President wants to make sure that never happens again.”
Asked whether Iran is now a threat to the United States, Levitt said, “Iran is chanting ‘Down with America.’ So, you tell me if it’s a threat.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have largely rallied behind Trump’s policy priorities, said they have confidence in the president to do the right thing.
Republican Senator Jerry Moran, who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the president’s war goals are “certainly an important topic”. Moran, who was not at Tuesday’s briefing, said he would prefer to hear that information in a “classified setting.” But “I don’t have a choice as to when that happens,” he said.
It would be unprecedented for a US president to announce a major military operation during his State of the Union address. But as Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert and former US peace negotiator at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “That’s reason enough for Trump to do it.”
