Top Washington Democratic lawmakers call for transparency, peers to assert congressional authority following strikes on Iran

Washington’s top Democratic lawmakers say the joint U.S.-Israel military action against Iran early Saturday morning shirked congressional authority, and are calling on their peers to reconvene “to put an end to this war.”

American and Israeli missile strikes rattled the Iranian capital Tehran and cities across the country around 9 a.m. local time, in what military officials are describing as a pre-emptive attack. Iran responded with missile and drone strikes of its own on Israel, and U.S. interests and military bases across the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the attack a “gross violation” of its national sovereignty, and that the airstrikes hit both military and civilian targets, as reported by NPR.

President Donald Trump announced the military action dubbed “Epic Fury” in a video posted to his social media site Truth Social, in which he claimed Iran has continued to develop its nuclear program and missiles that “can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”

Trump vowed to “raze their missile industry to the ground,” “annihilate their navy” and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”

“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” Trump said.

As tensions and turmoil beset the Middle East, Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell are calling on their peers to intervene. In a statement released Saturday, Cantwell said Trump should not have acted without congressional approval, the support of ally nations and “without having made his case to the American people.”

“The Iranian government is by every definition an enemy of the United States, but the enduring solution is to leverage strong bipartisan support for tougher sanctions and rebuilding the international coalition of allies and partners forged to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by having a vigorous inspection regime,” Cantwell said.

Murray called on Congress to assert its authority, and to “stand on the right side of history” in voting against further military engagement.

“The American people deserve to know which of their leaders supports another potentially bloody and costly war in the Middle East,” Murray said.

Murray, who voted against the war in Iraq in 2002, said the action against Iran threatens the security of American interests and civilians across the Middle East, and comes without the “hours and hours of briefings and discussions” that prefaced the Iraq vote.

“President Trump is just blithely throwing American lives and taxpayer dollars at a vainglorious effort at regime change,” Murray said. “What the American people want — we the people — that’s just an afterthought for this President.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Bellevue, who is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed Cantwell’s and Murray’s concerns about transparency and constitutional process. He believes the 2001 war authorization Congress passed after the 9/11 terror attacks, which subsequent presidents have claimed gives them broad war powers to pursue terrorists in multiple countries, clearly doesn’t apply in the case of war with Iran.

He said the objective of the war is unclear, and he hasn’t been told anything more than the public has.

“It seems like Iran wasn’t listening to us, so we want to punch them in the mouth,” Smith said.

Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner, of Spokane, did not return a request for comment regarding the U.S. — Israel military actions, but signaled his support of the strikes in a series of posts on social media platform X early Saturday morning.

“When the Ayatollahs of Iran chant ‘Death to America,’ they mean it,” Baumgartner wrote. “Time to end this threat that has helped kill thousands of Americans over the past decades.”

Baumgartner, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs committee, praised Trump’s “bold leadership,” calling him the “most strategic and consequential Commander in Chief since Eisenhower.”

“The sooner Iran’s leaders are in the dustbin of history the better,” Baumgartner wrote. 

Reporter Orion Donovan Smith contributed to this report.