Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, both vocal Iran hawks, were quick to praise the strikes.
“We can’t be the commander-in-chief,” Graham told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday. “You can’t have 535 commander-in-chiefs.” The South Carolina senator also said Iran was in the “hands of religious Nazis” who were “coming after us.”
In an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday, Cotton said, “Iran needs to heed President Trump’s warning.”
“We haven’t targeted other critical infrastructure,” Cotton said. “That’s an implicit message that Iran still has things that they hold dear that neither the United States nor Israel has struck.”
Several Democratic senators on the Armed Services Committee referred Vanity Fair to statements criticizing Trump’s escalation.
Ranking Democratic member Jack Reed of Rhode Island called the move a “massive gamble by President Trump” that “nobody knows yet whether it will pay off.”
“It’s easier to start wars than end them. Even though the US maintains military dominance, we are in a dangerous stage that could lead to significant instability in the region and beyond. We must be prepared for contingencies going forward,” he said. “I strongly urge the Trump Administration to immediately pursue restraint, diplomacy, and international engagement to prevent further bloodshed.”
“I expect a full, classified brief on the strikes in Iran, and the strategy and force protection plans, as soon as possible,” Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq, wrote on X. “While it’s too early to know the results, a successful strike by our capable military wasn’t the primary question. The real question is: what happens the day after? A strike can have major repercussions for safety and stability across the region. As someone who served in Iraq and saw up close the loss of blood and treasure over 20 years, I don’t want to be embroiled in another drawn-out conflict, and neither do the American people.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq War combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, didn’t mince words in her statement.
“I ran for Congress so that when the drums of war started beating in Washington again, I’d be in a position to make sure that our leaders fully consider the true costs of war—not just in dollars and cents, but in the sacrifices and blood of our troops,” Duckworth said. “The Trump Administration illegally bombed Iran tonight, putting American troops and citizens at risk of retaliation and threatening to draw us into yet another Middle East war without Constitutionally-required Congressional approval.”
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While Secretary Hegseth claimed that Trump and the Defense Department complied “with the notification requirements of the War Powers Act,” which says the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of military action, several congressional leaders appeared to hear about the strikes at the same time as the American public.
As Bernie Sanders addressed the crowd at his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, a member of the audience yelled out: “We just bombed Iran!”
Seconds later, a member of Sanders’s team hurried onstage to hand him a piece of paper with Trump’s announcement. According to the Vermont senator, it was the first time he learned about the strikes. He read Trump’s statement aloud, referring to the military action as “grossly unconstitutional” while the room erupted in a chant of “NO MORE WAR!”
