Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been Authorized By Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, it has been more than a month since President Trump brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran by ordering the killing of Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani.

Now, no one here mourns Soleimani's death. He was a ruthless killer. He has American blood all over his hands. But decisions over whether to attack sovereign nations or whether to send American troops to war are not decisions for the executive branch to make. These are decisions that the Constitution vests only in the U.S. Congress. That is why we need to pass, on a bipartisan basis, the War Powers Resolution that is currently pending before this body.

I want to come to the floor today to raise three issues for my colleagues--and I will try to do it briefly--surrounding the President's decision to use force against Iran and what the implications are for us, both as a body and as a nation.

First, when we are talking about the topic, I just think it is always important to level set. I think it is important for us to realize how much President Trump has thrown away.

This is a President who is running a master class right now on creating crises that didn't exist before he started flailing away in the china shop, and then this President claims we all have to get together behind his efforts to clean up the mess that he and his administration largely created.

Let's just remember where we were with Iran when President Trump came into office. When President Trump arrived in the Oval Office, Iran had stopped their quest for nuclear weapons capabilities. They were compliant with an intrusive inspections regime to make sure they didn't cheat on that agreement. Iranian-backed militias had stopped firing rockets at U.S. personnel in Iraq. In fact, those militias were actively working on a U.S.-led project--the eradication of ISIS.

President Obama had unified the entire world against Iran. Even Russia and China were working side by side with the United States to constrict Iran's nuclear program. And with the nuclear agreement secured, this global coalition had essentially been teed up for President Trump, to be used to make new progress to pressure Iran on a next set of concessions, on their ballistic missile program and their support for terrorist proxies across the region.

But President Trump threw this all away. And now, despite the sanctions that he has imposed on them unilaterally, Iran is more powerful than ever. We went from a construct in which we had the United States, Europe, China, and Russia aligned against Iran to a moment today where, on many issues, it is Iran, the European Union, China, and Russia aligned against the United States.

How much ground have we lost? This town tends to view power only through a military prism. So we have kind of lost sight of Iran's provocative actions because, since the strike in Iraq against our troops, we haven't had front-page headlines about what Iran is doing.

Let's talk about that strike for a moment, because we need to make it clear that, contrary to the administration's assertions, the Soleimani strike did not deter Iran at all. They levied a barrage of rockets at our forces in Iraq that were designed to kill. Some suggested that night, or the next day, that maybe their attack was calibrated to sustain minimal damage. Now we know that is not the case. In fact, it was calibrated to try to wipe out over 100 American soldiers. They missed. But, of course, now we are finding out that they actually didn't miss. At first, the administration reported no injuries. Then, it was a few. Then, it was dozens. Now the injury report is over 100. Thank God that nobody was killed.

But let's be clear. Iran fired rockets that injured over 100 American soldiers, and we didn't respond at all. I am glad we chose a path of military deescalation, but nobody in this administration and none of their allies in Congress can pretend that we ``restored deterrence.''

Second, it is important to note that Iran is retaliating. They are retaliating all over the region. In Iraq they are stronger than ever before. They have a new Prime Minister-designate who is incredibly close to Iran. They managed to get a vote in Parliament--nonbinding, admittedly--to kick all American soldiers out of that country. We are still in the middle of a negotiation to try to keep some American military presence there to fight ISIS, but Iran has used this opportunity to get more and more embedded in the Iraqi infrastructure. And the protests--the anti-Iran protests that were happening in Iraq-- are no longer making headlines because many of those elements are now lined up against the United States instead of against Iran.

Remember, Soleimani was working every single day to try to get American troops out of Iraq, and it may be that he gets closer in death to his goal than he did while he was alive.

In Yemen, Iran is fighting back. It is hard to see into the relationship between the Houthis and the Iranians, but the Houthis are acting out in provocative ways that are fundamentally different today than they were prior to the death of Soleimani. They are restricting humanitarian aid. They are launching attacks against civilian sites. We don't know that the Houthis are undertaking these actions because of orders from Iran, but it is likely that it is not coincidental that the Houthis' increase in activity in Yemen, further destabilizing a country that is really important to the United States, is happening at the very moment that Iran is looking for ways to get back at the United States for the Soleimani strike.

Remember, ISIS and al-Qaida are inside Yemen. The wing of al-Qaida that has the clearest designs against the United States takes advantage of the chaos inside Yemen to recruit, to grow, and to expand their territory. So as the Houthis are further destabilizing Yemen, the enemies of the United States are potentially getting stronger. Iran is, once again, back on the march inside Yemen.

Then, in Lebanon we had this moment in which there were protests on the streets that were demanding a Lebanese Government free of corruption and free of Iranian influence. We were this close to getting a technocratic government in Lebanon that might--that might--finally break the grip of Iran on elements of Lebanese politics. Instead of taking advantage of that moment, the United States decided that it was going to cut off aid to the army that was protecting the protesters. The combination of that mistake and then the assassination of General Soleimani allowed Iran to upend the momentum that was running against Tehran inside Lebanon.

Now guess what we have in Lebanon. We have a Hezbollah government in Lebanon. Instead of getting a citizen-focused technocratic government, we have an Iranian-aligned Hezbollah government in Lebanon.

Iran is fighting back. They are escalating. They may not be shooting missiles at American military bases, but they are gaining ground. They are taking provocative actions throughout the region.

It is really important for us to understand that. It is really important for us to understand how we are losing ground in places like Iraq and Yemen and Lebanon and how much stronger Iran is getting as a direct consequence of the action that was taken without congressional authorization.

My third and last point is this. Even if we pass this War Powers Resolution, this President is still going to maintain that he has a Mack truck-sized loophole through which he can run military action overseas without coming to Congress.

As for the President's article II authority, he has it. I am not denying that the President doesn't have constitutional authority to protect America prior to a congressional authorization, but the President's article II authority has morphed over time into a monster, and Congress needs to do more than just pass War Powers Resolutions to contain this Godzilla.

For years, Presidents of both parties have stretched executive war- making power too far. I have been on this floor criticizing a Democratic President--President Obama--who I argued should have come to Congress for authorization for airstrikes against Libya and should have come to Congress to ask for authorization before launching an offensive against ISIS, or waging drone wars in Yemen and Pakistan. But President Trump has taken this abuse to new levels, and the threat of falling into a new war with Iran, based on whispers of intelligence and without any authorization from Congress, is a real possibility that we have to take seriously in this body.

In fact, I listened to an administration official this week make the case that the President was actually authorized to kill Soleimani because the IRGC, the military group that he led, was listed by the administration as a terrorist organization.

I know that many of my colleagues have heard the administration make elements of this argument as well. That is a ridiculous argument that fails on its face. Remember, the administration, not Congress, designates who is on the terrorist list, so you cannot argue that the executive-level designation of a terrorist group is a declaration of war. It is not even a debatable proposition, but the administration is apparently making it.

So what I am saying is that we need to be looking toward the reform of the war powers process more broadly. The overreach of multiple administrations proves the need for an enforcement mechanism for Congress and, more specifically, definitions around the circumstances in which a President can use force before coming to Congress--a new War Powers Act. It should sunset the existing authorizations of military force and force us to come back to the table and write new authorizations for the military engagements that we still need to be in overseas, and it should create templates for new authorizations of military force that include reasonable sunset provisions on those new AUMFs and protections to make sure that those authorizations don't get stretched to cover groups and geographic areas that were never contemplated by the legislators who drafted the initial authorizations.

For many folks, it feels all too familiar to be down here today having this argument over the President's military escalation with Iran. We are talking about manipulated intelligence, a drumbeat of war. We are listening to the administration and its advocates bully Congress and the American people into avoiding this debate--the suggestion that, by questioning U.S. military objectives overseas, we are somehow hurting the troops.

It all brings back these flashbacks of the disastrous path to war in Iraq. This vote is essential, in my mind, so that we warn ourselves against going back down that wretched path again. So, yes, let's pass this resolution, but we can't stop there. Congress needs to do our job to reform the war powers system so that this President and future Presidents of both parties respect both Congress's role and the deepest responsibility that we all have to the American people when we make a decision to go to war.

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