The United States and Israel struck Iran early Saturday morning, as President Donald Trump (R) called for regime change and said the military operation was “massive and ongoing.”
Iran retaliated with strikes in Israel and at U.S. targets in the Middle East.
The operation, called “Epic Fury,” was announced by Trump in a video posted to Truth Social.
“We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” Trump said. “It will be totally again obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy. We’re going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans. And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Trump went on to say that American lives could be lost in the process.
The decision to launch strikes without Congressional approval has been met with criticism from many Democrats, including from Connecticut.
U.S. Representative Jim Himes (D-CT-4) is the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
"Everything I have heard from the Administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” Himes said. “As I expressed to Secretary Rubio when he briefed the Gang of Eight, military action in this region almost never ends well for the United States, and conflict with Iran can easily spiral and escalate in ways we cannot anticipate. It does not appear that Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history.”
The “Gang of Eight” is the eight congressional leaders who are first briefed on national intelligence matters. It includes the Senate minority and majority leaders, House majority and minority leaders, and the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-3) criticized Trump’s failure to brief Congress before the strike.
“President Trump’s decision, along with Israel, to launch direct military action against Iran to achieve regime change is a disaster in the making,” DeLauro said. “He is risking the lives of American personnel and the stability of the entire region, without Congressional approval and without any articulated plan. This is yet another unilateral decision from President Trump, which risks a wider war in the Middle East that the American people do not support.”
U.S. Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT-2) has co-sponsored a War Powers Resolution that would limit Trump’s ability to pursue military action in the region.
“After claiming in June that Operation Midnight Hammer ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear program, it is confounding to square his new claims of imminent threat to the U.S. homeland laid out in his 8-minute video from West Palm Beach last night,” Courtney said.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called on Congress to come back into session to act on the resolution. The House is scheduled to be out Monday and Tuesday, and the Senate until Monday evening.
"War must always be a last resort and never a first choice," Blumenthal said. "The Trump Administration seems to be engaging in a war of choice that rejects opportunities for diplomacy. A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable and Iran’s malign activities throughout the region pose a severe danger, but President Trump has failed to explain to the American people his objectives, end game, or exit strategy – risking another forever war. This attack fits a pattern of unilateral action without accountability to the American people."
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said the president should be focused on issues at home.
"Has he learned nothing from decades of U.S. military disaster in the Middle East? Has he spent not one single minute studying the lives lost and trillions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Libya? The American public does not want our President dragging us into another totally unnecessary conflict in a far-off land," Murphy said. "They want him to focus on American lives — lives that are being ruined by an economy beset by flat wages, disappearing jobs, rising prices, and widespread corruption."
This is a developing story.
