The Trump administration’s public justification for the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran has shifted again as Congress considers whether to restrain President Donald Trump’s authority to continue hostilities without congressional approval, according to lawmakers and administration officials briefed at the Capitol.
On Monday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson described what he said he learned from a classified briefing for congressional leaders, framing the attack as defensive because Israel was ready to act against Iran “with or without American support.” Johnson said he expected the administration concluded that Iran would respond immediately to any U.S. involvement, and that the decision to act required what he characterized as a “very difficult decision” for the president.
Johnson said the operation was intended to be limited in duration. “The commander in chief has said this is going to be an operation that is short in duration,” Johnson said, adding, “We certainly hope that’s true.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers the campaign was entering what he described as an imminent, escalating threat environment, saying the “hardest hits are yet to come.” Rubio also said the administration anticipated an Israeli action and argued that if the U.S. did not “preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” according to the report.
Rubio said U.S. goals were not aimed at regime change by Iranian popular uprising. He said the administration would like to see the Iranian people rise up and remove the regime, but he said “that’s not the objective,” adding that the “objective of this mission is to make sure they don’t have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region.”
The briefing and the administration’s messaging come as the war expands quickly across the Middle East and after the campaign in the account is described as having killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The report said the U.S.-Israel military campaign had spiraled into a widening conflict, with “hundreds” dead, including at least six U.S. military service personnel, and that lawmakers were weighing war powers steps.
In separate comments, Trump laid out four objectives for the war when he spoke at the White House, saying U.S. forces were aimed at destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, wiping out its naval capacity, stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and ensuring the “Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.” Trump also said the operation represented what he described as “our last, best chance to strike — what we’re doing right now — and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime,” according to the report.
While Republicans moved to characterize the action as necessary in response to imminent consequences, Democrats challenged both the premise of an immediate threat and the case for continued hostilities without congressional authorization. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he has heard “four or five stated reasons for the attack” and demanded that Trump explain his case publicly, along with what Warner described as an exit plan.
Warner said: “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel.” Other Democrats, including Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, questioned whether the U.S. was being drawn in by Israel’s decisions, saying, “Are we now such an enfeebled nation that Israel decides when we go to war?”
The war powers fight is playing out against a backdrop of broader executive authority and immediate fiscal pressures, the report said. It described Congress’s constitutional role in declaring war alongside the reality that presidents of both major political parties have accumulated authority over time to carry out more limited strikes, and it noted that Congress has declared war only five times in U.S. history, most recently in 1941.
The report also said Homeland Security was operating without routine funds due to a standoff with Democrats over their demands to restrain Trump’s immigration enforcement operations, and it described lawmakers as divided over both the potential costs in lives and spending. Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the president “unilaterally decided to do this” rather than making the case to Congress and the American people.
For the administration, Republicans argued against tying Trump’s hands as Congress debates a war powers resolution. Johnson said tying Trump’s hands “right now would be ‘frightening’” as he works to defeat the resolution, and it described the likelihood of the House and Senate being unable to override a veto. Even if Congress could pass a measure this week, the report said, a two-thirds vote would be unlikely to succeed.
As lawmakers focus on oversight, Rubio also said the administration encouraged the Iranian people to rise up and choose new leaders, even as he said the administration’s stated objective was not democratization. Rubio said, “We would love to see this regime be replaced,” and added that if there were ways to help “down the road,” the administration would be open, “but that’s not the objective,” according to the report.