Archive March 4, 2026

Washington, DC – The United States Senate is expected to hold an initial vote on a resolution to rein in US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, with top Democrat Chuck Schumer saying he fears “now more than ever” that the administration is planning to deploy boots on the ground.

The procedural vote expected on Wednesday represents the first time US lawmakers will be put on the record on their position towards the war, which the US and Israel began on Saturday, and which has since seen retaliation from Iran spread across the Middle East.

The vote will determine whether the chamber will move forward with further debate on the resolution and a final vote, or if any effort to assert congressional authority over the Trump administration’s military actions will be swiftly scuttled. A separate measure is expected to face an initial vote in the US House of Representatives tomorrow.

Speaking from the Senate floor, US Democrats condemned what they described as shifting justifications for the war and why the US needed to immediately attack Iran.

The top Democrat in the chamber, Schumer, portrayed Trump as a president willing to swiftly change his narrative, unmoored by evidence or his past positions.

“Whatever pops into his head, he says immediately. He picks one plan one day, then he picks the total opposite the next. He doesn’t think it through, he doesn’t check the facts,” he said.

“He is surrounded by ‘yes’ men; this is dangerous,” Schumer said, adding that recent briefings from the administration had provided “zero clarity” on its end goals and timeline.

Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said that the operation had just begun, with more US assets being sent to the region.

Schumer said the statement showed “it is clear they are widening the war … and I fear now more than ever that we are going to put boots on the ground, and that’s precisely what the American people fear.”

Comparison to 2003 invasion of Iraq

For his part, Democrat Dick Durbin pointed to the array of rationales the Trump administration has given for launching the war, while presenting scant concrete evidence supporting the various claims.

Trump has suggested that Iran was seeking to rebuild its nuclear programme, which he has said was “obliterated” in strikes last year; he has suggested that Iran was seeking to develop a long-range missile to strike the US; his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told reporters that close US-ally Israel was planning to attack Iran, which would likely lead to retribution against US assets in the region; Trump has said Iran was the one planning an imminent attack on Israel.

Most enduringly across the messaging, the Trump administration has sought to frame the totality of Iran’s actions since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 as representing an immediate threat.

Many US constitutional scholars have long argued that presidential powers, under Article Two of the US Constitution, are constrained to using the military for self-defence in responding to immediate threats to the country, beyond which congressional approval is needed.

Under international law, the concept of “imminence” is also important in determining whether an attack on a sovereign country is legal.

“Let me tell you my experience having been here on the vote to go to war in Iraq, it is far easier to get into a war than it is to get out of a war,” Durbin said. “We knew at the time that there was a possibility that a larger war would emerge than just a simple invasion, and it did – for nine years.”

Republicans defend Trump

Wednesday’s vote is the beginning of an uphill battle for supporters of the war powers resolution.

Republicans hold a slim majority in both the Senate and the US House of Representatives, and the party has largely coalesced around Trump’s message, even as influential members of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement have increasingly voiced dismay.

Democrats and independents that caucus with the party hold 47 seats in the Senate, compared to 53 held by Republicans. At least one Democrat, John Fetterman, has said he will oppose the resolution, while one Republican, Rand Paul, is co-sponsoring it.

That means all remaining Democrats and four Republicans would need to vote in support of constraining Trump’s powers. The math is equally challenging in the House, where Democrats hold 214 seats to Republicans’ 218.

Speaking from the Senate floor, Republican John Barrasso said: “Democrats would rather obstruct President Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear programme”.

“Trump communicated our objectives within hours of the first strike: destroy Iran’s missile industry, and that includes their missiles, their launchers and the production capacity missiles they were stockpiling, destroy Iran’s navy, destroy Iran’s terrorist proxy network, stop Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“President Trump absolutely acted within his Article Two ..s constitutional powers to achieve these goals,” he said.

Why does it matter?

Even if supporters of the war powers vote manage to reach majority support in both the House and Senate, the resolution would still be vetoed by Trump.

Lawmakers would then need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override Trump’s veto, a much higher barrier to clear.

Still, advocates have long argued that requiring war powers votes forces lawmakers to engage on the subject and gives constituents the ability to message their elected officials about the war, with early polls showing dismal approval of Trump’s strikes.

“Votes and debates on the Iran War Powers Resolution are essential because they force accountability,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, the legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Washington, DC based nonprofit.

“By taking the measure up, members of Congress put themselves on record, shine a light on the administration’s actions, and compel necessary concessions,” he told Al Jazeera.

El-Tayyab said the pending vote has already increased pressure on the administration to provide more information to Congress, pointing to a handful of Republicans who have expressed scepticism.

‘We already are in a scenario where the US has lost control of this war,’ argues political scientist Vali Nasr.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has again emerged as a potential figure to succeed his father, who was killed on the first day of the war with the United States and Israel.

No official announcement has been made by local authorities, but Israeli and Western media outlets have reported that Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardline cleric, is the frontrunner to become the new supreme leader of the 47-year-old Islamic Republic. His mother, wife, and one of his sisters were also killed in the strike, but the younger Khamenei was reportedly not present, and has so far survived the intense bombing of Iran.

Khamenei has never run for office or been subjected to a public vote, but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of the supreme leader, cultivating deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In recent years, Khamenei has increasingly been touted as a top potential replacement for his father, who was president for nearly eight years and then held absolute power for 36 years before being killed in attacks on his compound in Tehran on Saturday.

If he does ascend to power, then it would be a sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment retain power, and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations in the short term.

The 56-year-old younger Khamenei has never discussed the issue of succession publicly, a sensitive topic considering that his ascendancy to the position of supreme leader would effectively create a dynasty reminiscent of the Pahlavi monarchy before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Instead, Khamenei has largely kept a low profile, not giving public lectures, Friday sermons, or political addresses – to the point that many Iranians have not heard his voice, despite knowing for years that he was a star rising within the theocratic establishment.

Accusations

For nearly two decades, local and foreign-based opponents have linked Khamenei’s name to the violent suppression of Iranian protesters.

The reformist camp within the Islamic Republic first accused him of tampering with elections and wielding the IRGC’s paramilitary Basij force to crack down on peaceful protesters during the Green Movement of 2009, which took form after populist politician Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected as president in a controversial vote.

Basij forces have since been at the heart of the establishment’s crackdown against multiple waves of nationwide protests, most prominently two months ago, when the United Nations and international human rights organisations say state forces killed thousands, mostly on the nights of January 8 and 9.

The late supreme leader and the establishment have blamed “terrorists” and “rioters”, armed, trained and funded by the US and Israel, for the unprecedented killings, as they have previously done during previous rounds of anti-establishment protests.

Mid-ranking cleric

Khamenei began developing close ties within the IRGC from his younger years, when he served in the Habib Battalion of the force during multiple operations in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Several of his comrades, including other clerics, went on to obtain leading posts in the security and intelligence apparatus of the then-nascent Islamic Republic.

Khamenei, who is under US and Western sanctions, has also amassed an economic empire involving assets in multiple countries, according to reports in Western media outlets.

His name is not believed to appear in any of the alleged transactions, but he has reportedly moved billions of dollars over the years through a network of insiders and associates linked with the Iranian establishment.

Bloomberg tied Khamenei to Ali Ansari, who was in the spotlight late last year after his Bank Ayandeh was forcibly dissolved by the state because it went bankrupt due to handing out loans to unnamed insiders and accruing huge debts. The dissolution of the bank helped push Iran’s rampant inflation higher, making Iranians poorer as the losses had to be compensated partly through public funds.

Neither Khamenei nor Ansari have publicly addressed their links and the allegations, which also include the purchase of luxury property in European countries.

Khamenei’s religious credentials have also been an issue of contention, since he is a hojatoleslam, a mid-level cleric, rather than the higher rank of ayatollah. But his father was not an ayatollah either when he became the country’s leader in 1989, and the law was amended to accommodate him, so a similar compromise could be possible for him as well.

For now, it remains unclear when or how the Islamic Republic will proceed with announcing new leaders, as it once again imposes a nationwide internet blackout and restrictions on the flow of information amid an intense bombing campaign by the US and Israel across the country.

A three-member council consisting of hardline cleric and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi, ultra-conservative cleric and judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and President Masoud Pezeshkian has now been legally mandated to take over interim governance.