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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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the Constitution vests Congress with the power to declare war and ultimately to authorize the use of military force in order to provide a critical check on a President's decision to deploy troops overseas. Congress has for too long abdicated this responsibility in deference to Presidents from both parties.

Presidents have used a broad interpretation of the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force to justify American military interventions in far-flung theaters such as Yemen and North Africa. I have supported bipartisan efforts to revisit these authorizations because nearly 20 years later, they are still being used to justify action unforeseen by the Congress that initially approved them.

This effort has become more urgent as this President's reckless, impulsive actions are bringing us precipitously close to war with Iran. Contrary to whatever he says, Donald Trump's Iran policy has not made us safer. In fact, his Iran policy has undermined America's national security, isolated the United States from our allies, put the safety of American troops at risk, and, yes, brought us closer to war.

To understand how we arrived at this moment and why Congress needs to act, we should begin by evaluating the consequences of the President's misguided and dangerous decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

By all accounts, the administration inherited a deal that was working, one painstakingly negotiated over many months with the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran.

It bears repeating. The deal explicitly stated in its first paragraph that ``Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons,'' and it put a comprehensive, intrusive, and verifiable enforcement mechanism in place to achieve this objective. It blocks pathways Iran would need to produce the highly enriched uranium or plutonium it would take to produce a nuclear weapon. Under the verification regime created by the deal, international inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, were afforded extensive access within Iran to ensure their compliance.

The Iran nuclear deal was reached through tough, principled diplomacy. These negotiations culminated in an agreement that world leaders could credibly declare would prevent Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons.

In May 2018, President Trump recklessly undermined our credibility and isolated the United States from our allies by unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. It is important to emphasize that Iran was in compliance with the agreement when the President tore it up.

Our unilateral withdrawal from the agreement and the administration's subsequent so-called maximum pressure campaign has exposed the United States to enormous risk. We have seen the consequences almost every day for the past 2 years as Donald Trump has engaged in an escalating and increasingly violent tit-for-tat with Iran.

The President's chaotic escalation culminated with his impulsive and incredibly risky decision to target and kill high-level Iranian and Iraqi military officials, including Iranian General Soleimani, on Iraqi soil.

The question before us is not whether General Soleimani deserved this fate. He was a loathsome figure who was responsible for killing many U.S. servicemembers and for orchestrating terrorism throughout the Middle East. The question before us is whether carrying out this risky and provocative act made the United States and the Middle East safer or more secure. It has not.

Over the past month, the consequences of the President's impulsive actions have become clearer. We now know President Trump directed the attack without notifying leaders in Congress or our Iraqi partners or even our allies who have troops positioned in Iraq. He ordered the attack without preparing for what came next, exposing the United States to further hostilities without a plan for how to deescalate tensions.

After Iran retaliated with a coordinated missile strike on American military infrastructure in Iraq, the President was quick to reassure the public that no American soldiers were harmed in the counterattack. We now know this was a lie. After weeks of denials--or even comments from the President that some troops were suffering from ``headaches''-- the Pentagon on Monday finally acknowledged that 109 servicemembers suffered traumatic brain injuries in the Iranian attack. For the President of the United States to make light of these serious injuries--injuries that, in many cases, may impact these soldiers for the rest of their lives--is unconscionable and dishonors the service and sacrifices made every day by our men and women in uniform.

In a sign that tensions continue to escalate, the President has deployed more than 14,000 additional servicemembers to the Middle East in the wake of the strike on General Soleimani, exposing even more Americans to potential retaliation from Iran or its regional proxies. These developments further reinforce our conclusion that President Trump did not give much thought to the consequences of his actions.

The administration has provided ever-evolving and very troubling after-the-fact explanations that fail to assuage our concerns about this impulsive decision. Only a few weeks ago, the President tweeted in all caps that ``Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.'' Given that the President tore up the Iran nuclear deal which would have prevented Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon, one cannot help but question where this bellicose rhetoric is coming from and what it portends.

The American people have made it explicitly clear that they do not want to go to war with Iran, especially if war is the result of the President's reckless and impulsive actions. It is therefore imperative that Congress exercise its exclusive--exclusive--war powers under article I of the Constitution to prevent this President from launching a disastrous war with Iran.

In normal times, we could have confidence during a crisis like this that the President of the United States would mobilize a whole-of- government response to this crisis, and in normal times, the President would lead our allies and the international community in seeking a diplomatic outcome to our escalating tensions with Iran, but these are not normal times.

Congress must reassert its constitutional authority by demanding the President seek explicit authorization prior to any military action against Iran. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting Senator Tim Kaine's War Powers Resolution tomorrow.

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