Democratic lawmakers on Sunday pushed the Trump administration to more clearly lay out its goals in Iran as war continues to rage on in the Middle East.
With the war extending into its third week and Iran threatening to broaden its campaign against the U.S. and its allies, President Donald Trump is facing fierce opposition from Democrats making the rounds on the Sunday news programs who say they see no end in sight.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said during an interview with “Fox News Sunday” that while he remains “open-minded about what might happen in the future,” he still hoped for the administration to articulate how it envisions the war ending.
“One good thing that the administration could say is, ‘Here's the endgame,’ because they have not said that, right?” Himes told host Shannon Bream. “So, what I would like to hear is — once the Navy is sunk, as it largely is — and the missile launchers are gone, we are going to withdraw, and in withdrawing, here's how we're going to make sure that there is never a nuclear weapon built in Iran.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. and Israel had struck more than 15,000 enemy targets in the war’s first two weeks, adding that Iran’s air force, Navy, air defenses and missile launchers had been decimated.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday that Trump still has not “leveled with the American people” about his objectives for the war, in his view.
“We still haven't heard a clear articulation of why we're at war. What was the imminent threat we were facing?” Schiff said on “Meet the Press.” “They've said it was the nuclear threat, but the intelligence doesn't back that up. They said it was the threat of being hit in the United States by ballistic missiles. That is years and years away. They want regime change, but then they say they don't want regime change.”
Trump administration officials have repeatedly projected that the war will last a matter of weeks, not months, but the White House has yet to lay out what might precipitate an end to the fighting. Trump said on Monday the war was “pretty well complete,” but on Saturday, he told NBC News he was not yet ready to accept a ceasefire deal with Iran.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also criticized Trump for saying in a Friday radio interview that the war would end “when I feel it in my bones.”
“The decision to go to war in this case was a choice by President Trump, and as I was racing through, I won't go through the whole list again, but it was regime change, get rid of the enriched uranium, get rid of their missiles, sink the Navy. I'm not sure we have reached successful conclusion on any of those four,” Warner told host Margaret Brennan during a Sunday appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
In addition to soaring fuel prices, the White House is facing public unease over the war, with several polls conducted in the wake of the initial spate of attacks finding the military operation broadly unpopular.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the war’s costs outweigh its benefits, with American casualties mounting and a missile strike hitting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Saturday.
“As the military always tells you, hope is not a strategy, and there was no strategy to get from this massive military action — with all the costs that have come with it — to a fundamental change in the Iranian regime,” he told host Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
More than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Iran’s Health Ministry, and U.S. casualties have risen to 13 after six American crew members died in a plane crash in western Iraq last week.
Military officials have also said that 140 U.S. service members were wounded during the 10 days of fighting ending on March 10, with the first week of the war costing the U.S. approximately $11 billion in its first week alone, according to the Pentagon.
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