WASHINGTON — Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to make the case that the world is becoming more dangerous on his watch, not less, and that he is reneging on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions.
The argument strikes at Trump’s contention that his blend of negotiating skills and toughness is enough to keep the United States safe.
In the space of a few days, Trump has made the United States a combatant in another Middle East war that exposes soldiers to potential deadly reprisals, Democrats contend.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin pointed to Trump’s inaugural address, in which he said he would measure his success by “the wars we never get into.”
Yet, Martin said, “against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran. Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Several lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the Trump administration for clarity about the attack on Iran and the endgame he envisions. But they are also using the moment to try to undercut Trump’s standing with those who voted for him in the hope he would not get entangled in foreign wars.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s commitment was “to get us out of foreign wars.”
“Say what you want about Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars,” Smith said. “He got us out of the one war that we were in [in Afghanistan]. Trump has now started a war with Iran.”
Justifying the strike, Trump administration officials said the United States has crippled an Iranian nuclear program that poses a worldwide threat.
But the attack could also invite retaliatory strikes against U.S. service members and assets in the region and perhaps even the homeland.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that while he hopes for the best after the attacks, “history suggests that you better be well aware of the fact that the best-case scenario almost never happens.”
“The worst-case scenario is that the Iranians have a lot more missiles than we think they do and we end up with dead soldiers and sailors in the region,” he added.
Before Trump ordered the strike, Iran had sent a private message warning him that the regime could unleash terrorist attacks in the United States by activating sleeper cells inside the country, according to two U.S. officials and a person with knowledge of the threat.
What’s more, Trump’s State Department put out a warning to Americans worldwide Sunday that they face heightened risk due to the Iranian conflict.
Democrats are also condemning Trump’s methods in carrying out the attack, saying he should have sought congressional authorization under the War Powers Act.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Trump’s unilateral actions are grounds for impeachment.
“He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations,” she wrote on X.
In an interview, Darin Selnick, a former senior Defense Department official under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said he trusted that Trump acted because there was no other choice.
“There’s a world of classified and secret information that we don’t know about but the president does,” Selnick said. “Knowing the president, I know he did not make this decision lightly, he did not make it quickly, and he tried every other option before he went down this road and wouldn’t have gone down this road unless he felt he absolutely had to do it.”
A handful of Democrats have voiced support for the strikes, including Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, as well as Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Jacky Rosen of Nevada.
Whether Trump sees the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities as a one-off or a precursor to deeper U.S. involvement is unclear. He and his senior officials put out conflicting messages Sunday about Iran’s fate.
After Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance said they had no interest in ousting Iran’s leadership in favor of a more palatable regime, Trump suggested that his goal may be more far-reaching. He wrote on social media that he might want to see new leadership in Iran and floated potential “regime change.”
“Make Iran Great Again,” he wrote in a twist on his old campaign slogan.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: “There needs to be a classified briefing of Congress and a public explanation to the American people about the strategy for protecting American troops and personnel, as well as seeking peace and stability in the region.
“It’s easy to talk about conquering danger, but so far it seems to be his fantasy, not reality. The way to really surmount danger would be to stand up to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Over the weekend, the White House leaned on Vance, who has long been a skeptic of foreign intervention, to defend Trump’s decision.
“I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” Vance said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”
He also insisted the current conflict “is not going to be some long, drawn-out thing.”
As a candidate, Trump said Biden’s fecklessness had contributed to global instability. He often says the pair of wars that started under Biden — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel — would not have happened had he been president.
“The war between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here and for four years during my term had no problem in preventing it from happening,” Trump said in April. “President Putin and everyone else respected your president!”
Yet Trump’s efforts to broker peace deals in Gaza and Ukraine have faltered, a point that Democrats are quick to note.
“It’s obvious that wars have escalated,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who is helping lead the push for Trump to seek approval for military action. “The war in Gaza continues. The war in Ukraine continues. And now we’re at war with Iran. This is a complete abdication of Trump’s promise to end wars abroad and focus on investing in American communities.”
Democrats, he continued, need to sweep aside leaders who have tolerated such conflicts and develop “a changed message around not having more of these endless wars of choice in the Middle East.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he plans to force a vote this week on his resolution to block Trump from taking military action in Iran unless the House and the Senate approve it first.
“I fear deeply we’re being misled about this, just as we were before we tragically got into a war with Iraq,” he said on “Fox News Sunday,” invoking a war that is now deeply unpopular with much of Trump’s base.
A successful military operation reflects well on the commander in chief. In his nationwide televised address Saturday night, Trump declared that the strike “obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities. If that judgment proves premature — if Iran restores its nuclear program — his triumphalism could boomerang.
A Republican president from another era, George W. Bush, learned the hard way that it is best to be circumspect before proclaiming “mission accomplished” in the Middle East.
“The business about ‘obliterated,’ that’s Trump,” said Elliott Abrams, who was a special representative for Iran in the State Department during Trump’s first term and who also worked in the Bush White House. “Somebody wrote that line for him or it came from him naturally.
“We may well have [destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities], but there’s no way to know that yet,” added Abrams, who is now senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.