Senior Democrats said they had been left in the dark about Operation Midnight Hammer, the United States highly coordinated strike Saturday on the Iranian nuclear enrichment program.
Neither Mark Warner, an American senator from Virginia, nor Jim Himes, a representative of Connecticut, both top Democrats On the Senate and the intelligence panels of the Chamber, were informed before the attack, according to reports.
But this came in the midst of allegations according to which republican counterparts were warned in advance of the operation, which involved 125 planes – including seven B -2 bombers carrying 14 bunker busters weighing three tonnes – and 75 tomahawk missiles launched from American submarines. Axios reported That the head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, was informed shortly before the start of the attacks at 6:40 p.m. Eastern time.
The staff of the Himes Committee received a notification on the Pentagon strike only after Donald Trump made this announcement on social networks shortly before 8 p.m., depending on the point of sale.
The president’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth told a press conference on Sunday Sunday that strikes “took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we can be ready when the president called”.
“It took poor orientation and the highest operational security,” said HegSeth, partially referring to the United States deployment B-2 bombers on the Pacific Island of Guam earlier on Saturday.
The American attack of Iran came as most democrats had left Washington for the Juneteenth festivals – but the lack of a fore -avxator for the legislators of the intelligence committees is striking. The best legislators are generally informed of military operations in advance.
“Cost, duration, risk for our troops, strategy – the bases before making a decision of this consequence,” said Chris Coons, the senior democratic member of the Senatorial Relations Committee last week.
The Senator of Arizona, Mark Kelly, told NBC Meet the press on Sunday that the White House should have been “just in advance” by coming to the Congress “and asking the authorization to do so”.
“This is the constitutional approach of that,” said Kelly. “He could have told us about the goal and the plan in advance.”
Tim Kaine, a senator from Virginia who sits on armed services as well as foreign relations committees, said the congress should be informed in advance.
“Congress must authorize a war against Iran,” he said. “This Trump war against Iran – we didn’t do it.”
Senators are expected to receive a briefing on strikes next week. But the signs that an attack was imminent was there to see: additional American military assets had been transferred to the region, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had postponed a briefing to the Intelligence Senate Committee last week.
Moderate and progressive democrats were in conflict on the commitment of American forces to support Israel. The use of force by Trump could now deepen ideological schism.
Senator Adam Schiff, a California democrat, told CNN on Sunday that “the destruction of these facilities is positive in the sense that it returns the Iranian program”. But he warned that Iran could now “sprint for a bomb”.
He added that strikes were “not constitutional” and that the congress should be brought “in substantial action which could lead to a major epidemic of war”. But Schiff refused to rely on the question of whether the world was safer after the strike. “We just don’t know,” he said.
Schiff argued that in the absence of a briefing “it is an order that should not have been given”.
Eminent Democrats with presidential aspirations in 2028 were particularly silent on the 10 -day war between Israel and Iran. “They hide their bets in a way,” said Joel Rubin, former deputy deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration.
“The animals of the districts of the Democratic Party at the moment are so hostile to the War of Israel in Gaza that it is really difficult to go out as one can corroborate an unauthorized war which supports Israel without return.”
But some had spoken. Ro Khanna, a member of the California congress, called the White House threats to an attack on Iran “a decisive moment for our party”. This came as progressive and right -wing insulation legislators found themselves uncomfortable.
Khanna had presented legislation with the republican member of the United States House, Thomas Massie, who called Trump to “end” the use of the American armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war of the Congress.
After the strike, Khanna posted on X: “Trump struck Iran Without any authorization from the congress. »»
Khanna said the congress should “return immediately” to Washington to vote on the measure that he and Massie co-wrote. Kaine said he would bring a similar resolution to the Senate in the coming days.
Mass said in response At the strikes: “It is not constitutional.”
Independent American senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucus with the Democrats, said that the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “The Netanyahu War against Iran would be a catastrophic error”. He presented legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran.
New York MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites was “disastrous”.
“The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a serious violation of the Constitution and the powers of the Congress War. It has risen impulsively to launch a war that can trap us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly ahead of indictment,” wrote Ocasio-Cortez.
During the JD Vance press meeting of NBC, the American vice-president, argued that it was wrong to say that the strikes on Saturday in Iran exceeded the presidential authority of Trump.
Schiff, on the other hand, refused to support calls for indictments against Trump, saying that the inability in brief democrats before the strike was “another partisan exercise”.