No ‘Nation-Building’: Republicans Insist Iran Conflict Will End Within Weeks as Trump Seeks Deal

Echoing President Trump’s insistence that a deal ought to be made with the new leadership of Iran, Republicans on Tuesday insisted that the conflict ought to come to a resolution within the coming weeks without a wholesale regime change operation. Democrats, however, said they saw no viable path out of an escalating conflict. Mr. Trump and the Israeli military launched the attack on Iran in the early morning hours of Saturday. In his announcement, the president called on Iranian citizens to rise up and take control of their country. He also promised that any Iranian troops or police officers who sided with that effort would be granted “immunity,” and any of those who continued to support the regime would face certain death. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to brief all members of the House and Senate about the operation in Iran. Republicans left the room confident that this will not be a protracted war, and that disabling the Islamic Republic’s conventional military capabilities was swift and successful. Regime change would not be coming, they insisted. “This is really a very simple matter — it’s about building ballistic missiles. That’s what Iran was engaged in and they were doing it at a speed and at a scale that was exceeding the ability of our regional allies to respond appropriately,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the briefing. “This president thought that it was a great enough threat that we needed to act.”“If that window [to attack] had passed, it would have been much more difficult for us to achieve the mission,” Mr. Johnson said. The speaker insisted that after taking out some of the top officials of Iranian leadership — including the supreme leader, the defense minister, and the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — there would be an effort among everyday Iranians to create a new life for themselves. He insisted that America would not be engaged in a significant effort to build a new Iran, and that leaders from across the world would be supportive of a potential protest movement within the country, though he offered no specifics. “We have no ability to get into that nation-building business. We don’t do that,” the speaker said. “We’re not the world’s policemen. America has enough problems of our own.” He declared that it was a “moment of opportunity” for Iranians to “stand on their own two feet.”House members are set to vote this week on a war powers resolution which could force the president to seek congressional authorization for any additional operations. As of Tuesday, it appears that only the Republican sponsor of the resolution — Congressman Thomas Massie — may be the only GOP member to vote for it. Another conservative, Congressman Warren Davidson, has expressed concerns about the attacks, though he has not yet taken a position on that resolution. Mr. Rubio, speaking to reporters before the briefing for all senators, said the goal was not regime change, but destroying conventional weaponry and the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue developing nuclear weapons. “The president acted on the timing that gave us the highest chance of success,” Mr. Rubio said. Democrats were insistent that they received no guarantees about a broader war with Iran, saying that the administration officials gave no information on a timeline or what options may be off the table. “This is going to make the operation in Libya look like child’s play,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters. “They have contempt for the American people because they think that they can carry out the biggest war in the Middle East since Iraq and Afghanistan without a single vote.”“I was just shocked by the way in which they … are dismissing the role that the American people play in deciding when do we go to war and how clearly committed they are to an open-ended engagement with no end in sight,” Mr. Murphy said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a former House Intelligence Committee chairwoman, warned that this conflict could very easily spiral into a yearslong battle not unlike the war in Iraq. “They have a … responsibility, hopefully — hopefully — based in a global diplomatic approach that will be successful, but there’s no reason to suspect that,” the former speaker said. Congressman Jason Crow, an Army Ranger who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, also said he saw no guarantee that this conflict will not spiral out of control and become an all-out war. “It’s … very clear this administration has no plan for the day after,” Mr. Crow told reporters. “They are trying to destroy the Iranian regime and they have no plan for what comes next. History shows very clearly this does not end well.”

No ‘Nation-Building’: Republicans Insist Iran Conflict Will End Within Weeks as Trump Seeks Deal

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