This post contains excerpts of an article originally published by Truthout.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) is warning President Donald Trump that acting on his threats to take up arms with Israel in its war with Iran would be an unconstitutional circumventing of Congress to start a war that the American public overwhelmingly doesn’t want.
Shortly after Israel launched unprompted strikes on numerous sites in Tehran on Friday, President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News that “the U.S. will defend itself and Israel if Iran retaliates.” He has since made numerous threats to Iran, insisting that they capitulate with his administration’s demands for a nuclear deal “before there is nothing left” of the country.
These and other statements by the president suggest that Trump would dispatch the U.S. military to fight alongside Israel whenever he wants, Tlaib pointed out — the same way that Trump conducted weeks of unauthorized strikes on Yemen earlier this year, causing hundreds of casualties, progressive lawmakers have previously said.
“The president cannot circumvent congressional war powers and unilaterally send U.S. troops to war with Iran,” said Tlaib in a post on social media on Friday.
“This is a violation of Article I of the Constitution which requires congressional approval to declare war. The American people do not want another endless war in the Middle East that will cost lives and tear their families apart,” she went on.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that the U.S. was not involved in Israel’s attacks, which struck numerous residential buildings across Tehran, and said that the strikes were “unilateral.”
However, Trump has seemingly been eager to take credit for involvement in the strikes. On Friday, he suggested that the U.S. had deeper engagement with the strikes than just a notification from Israel.
“Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on,” the president said in comments to The Wall Street Journal.
ABC reports, citing a U.S. source familiar, that the U.S. had provided “exquisite” intelligence for the strikes. The source reportedly said that the U.S. is prepared to fight on behalf of Israel in the war. Some Israeli sources have also reportedly claimed that the U.S. was heavily involved in the attack, and gave the “clear U.S. green light” even as some Trump administration officials had opposed the idea of Israel striking Iran.
Iranian-born analyst Trita Parsi and executive vice president for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said that officials’ remarks indicate that Israel is attempting to manipulate the U.S. into becoming involved in a war with Iran — a war that has long been a goal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, numerous analysts and experts have previously noted
“Trump himself was coordinating this with the Israelis in the hope, apparently, for Trump, thinking that this will actually soften the Iranian negotiating position and enable him to get a deal in which the Iranians capitulate,” Parsi told Democracy Now! on Friday. “I suspect that the Israeli hope, however, is that the Iranians don’t capitulate, that they strike back, and, by that, get the U.S. to get more actively involved in the war.”
The U.S. is seemingly making other preparations. Per Politico, the Pentagon has moved two warships capable of defending against ballistic and cruise missiles closer toward Israel as it prepares for retaliatory strikes. The U.S. had provided similar support when Israel and Iran swapped a series of strikes last year.
U.S. involvement in war with Iran is indeed a highly unpopular prospect. A poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last year found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans oppose using U.S. troops to defend Israel if Iran attacked it. Another poll by the University of Maryland from last month found that 69 percent of Americans — including 64 percent of Republicans — prefer a diplomatic solution to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while only 14 percent of respondents prefer military action.
Meanwhile, public support for Israel overall is flagging. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found “all-time low” sympathy for Israelis over Palestinians, marking the continuation of a longtime trend that began even before Israel embarked on its genocide in Gaza.
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