Members of Congress split largely along party lines in their assessments of the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran, with Republicans mostly backing the operation and Democrats urging the administration to seek congressional approval and questioning President Donald Trump's strategy.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that it’s not the United States’ job to pick Iran’s next leader and that the U.S. should not put boots on the ground after Iran’s supreme leader was killed in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes.
Pressed by moderator Kristen Welker on whether the U.S. has a plan to ensure that Iran’s future is determined by Iranians and that Iran would not be a major state sponsor of terrorism, Graham argued that it was not up to Americans.
“It’s not his job or my job to do this,” Graham said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Our job is to make sure Iran is no longer the largest state sponsor of terrorism, to help the people reconstruct a new government. No boots on the ground.”
Graham argued that it was in the United States’ interest to ensure that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was dead. Trump announced Saturday that Khamenei was killed in an attack, and he said in an interview Saturday with NBC News that “most” of the people who make decisions for Iran “are gone.”
“It’s in America’s interest to make sure that Iran can no longer be the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Graham said. “We’re close. Once the people decide what they want to do next, I don’t mind helping them, but I know what they’re not going to be allowed to do next: regenerate the largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
Democrats were split over whether the U.S. was safer with Khamenei dead.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said on “Meet the Press” that he disagreed with Graham, arguing that he has “been consistently wrong.”
“Let me say this: Khamenei was a brutal dictator, but Americans are not safer today,” Khanna said.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in a separate interview on “Meet the Press” that he agreed with Graham’s assessment that the world was safer with Khamenei dead. At the same time, Kelly criticized Trump’s post on Truth Social referring to his hopes for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the police to “peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots.”
“Hope is not a strategy,” Kelly said. “We've got to have a plan here. I mean, what is the strategic goal, and how do we achieve it?”
Asked whether the U.S. could continue the operation without boots on the ground, Kelly said, “That is incredibly challenging.” He argued that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and criticized Trump for having withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal during his first term.
Graham asserted during his interview that “there will be no American boots on the ground.”
“This is not Iraq. This is not Germany. This is not Japan,” he said. “We’re going to free the people up from a terrorist regime.”
Graham has been an ardent backer of the administration’s decision to strike Iran. In a post Saturday on X, he called the move “one of the most consequential military operations in modern history.” In a separate post, he argued that Trump has “become the gold standard for foreign policy achievements as a Republican president.”
In the aftermath of the strikes, several Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, have called for a war powers vote to compel the administration to seek permission from Congress before it engages in future military action.
Asked whether he would vote to support a war powers resolution, Kelly said he would “have to take a close look at it.”
“I want to hear from the White House what their strategy is going forward,” he said. “I would say at this point it’s rather unlikely that I would be.”
Khanna said on “Meet the Press” that he believed every Democrat would ultimately support a war powers vote. He conceded that it would most likely not pass but argued that the vote would be “close” and that “we’ve got a few days to work on it.”
“We’re at war with Iran,” he said. “We killed their leader. We have over 100 of our fighter jets bombing them. The point of this resolution is to say, ‘We do not want another war in the Middle East,’ or at least Congress should opine on that, should vote on that.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence committee, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he “saw no intelligence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of pre-emptive strike against the United States of America.”
Shortly after the attack began, Trump said in a video overnight Saturday that the military’s objective “is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
Warner repeatedly accused Trump of starting a “war of choice,” though he said he would not “shed any tears over the death of the Iranian leadership,” adding, “The Iranian regime is awful.”
“But if we now get a leader in that rushes towards weaponization that literally takes the thousands of missiles that Iran still has in its arsenal and launches them all at once, are we in a better spot?” he added later. “Is America safer or not? That, to me, is very much of an open question.”
Across the aisle, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., was asked in a separate interview on “State of the Union” whether he had seen evidence to suggest that Iranian missiles could have soon reached the U.S. ahead of the strikes.
Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pointed to Iranian missiles' being capable of hitting targets in the region, including U.S. bases, as well as the country's having a space launch program.
“This has been a gathering threat on the horizon,” he said. “President Trump is right. It is absolutely vital and necessary now to address that threat before it fully materializes in the near future.”
