US Sen. Jeff Merkley says Iran attack ‘shreds our Constitution’

U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is one of the many congressional Democrats denouncing President Trump’s military attack on Iran as unconstitutional.

The country’s founding document assigns the power to declare war to Congress.

Iran’s supreme leader was killed in attack by Israel and the U.S. on Sunday without prior congressional authorization. Trump said the action gave Iran the opportunity to “take back” their country.

As of March 2, at least six U.S. Service members have been killed in the military operation.

Both chambers of Congress are expected to vote this week on bipartisan war powers resolutions, which would limit the president’s ability to take further military action — in Iran and around the world — without congressional approval.

Even if passed, it would be largely symbolic as it’s unlikely Congress could muster a two-thirds majority needed to override an almost certain presidential veto.

Merkley, a long-time member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said he and other Democrats aim to stop military action in Iran and prevent similar actions in the future, which critics say is destabilizing the region and could potentially impact the entire international security order.

Merkley spoke with OPB’s “Think Out Loud” today.

Here are highlights from that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity:

On whether Iran posed an “imminent threat,” as Pres. Trump claimed

“Absolutely not. What we know is that [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu had said he wanted to destroy some of the ballistic missiles, the larger ballistic missiles that provided some threat to Israel, and was asking for U.S. permission. The U.S. was certainly in the position to say, ‘Uh, hell no. We’re not supporting you doing that.’ We have all kinds of leverage with Israel. But the way that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio framed it was that we have no influence, and that essentially America was dragged into this war by Netanyahu. As if Netanyahu had led Trump around with a ring through his nose, that we were subservient, a puppet being controlled by the head of Israel. That is an outrageous explanation. Totally unacceptable.”

On what kinds of military actions he, as a member of Congress, would vote to authorize

“It would have to be an extraordinary set of circumstances involving an imminent threat to the United States, with the intelligence that I found enormously persuasive.

“I do believe that those instances are quite rare in the world … This conflict, this war was not launched in accordance with the Constitution. There was no request for authorization in advance, there was no imminent threat, and the president’s own explanation, or his Secretary of State’s explanation … doesn’t pass muster at all."

On the anticipated effect of the upcoming vote on the war powers resolutions in the Senate and House

“The most important aspect of this vote is that it puts people on record where they stand, and it creates a debate over the issues. It isn’t at all rising to the level of what Congress should be doing, which is holding a debate on an authorization before a war is launched. But under these circumstances, at least it creates a public debate and a vote to show where individuals stand, which allows the public, in a republic, to say, ‘Hey, member of Congress, my Senator, my House member, I like what you’re doing, or I don’t like what you’re doing.’ And that, in other words, at least it’s flexing the muscles of a democracy, even though we understand that in this case, it takes a simple majority.”

On his view of the best-case and worst-case scenarios now

“The worst case is an extended war with a significant loss of life, significant loss of treasure. Remember the Afghanistan and Iraq wars involved some 7,000 [U.S.] deaths, some 50,000 significant injuries, some $8 trillion in national treasure. That’s just on our side of the equation. So that’s the worst — an extended, extended war with massive losses that leads to chaos going forward. I think it’s important to remember that we had really had a relationship with Iran as an ally, and some would even characterize it as a friend, in the 1950s, until we decided to assassinate their elected prime minister. His name was [Mohammad] Mosaddegh.

“In the short term, that might have looked like a victory, but what did it lead to? It led to what is now 73 years of a highly unproductive relationship, with lots of problems for the United States, and so it’s just to my point that the aftermath of these types of actions is hard to predict.

“But the best case: We vote for the war powers resolution, shut this thing down, and immediately we go back to the negotiating table. We’ll resolve the issues over the nuclear program in Iran and they re-establish a leadership that is a whole lot better leadership than they had under the ayatollah.”

You can listen to the whole conversation with Sen. Jeff Merkley on “Think Out Loud” by clicking below.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Over the weekend, the Trump administration attacked Iran, bringing the U.S. into our largest Middle Eastern war in a generation. The president has said that the war against Iran could last four to five weeks, or longer, and has put forward a hodgepodge of objectives.

Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley says the war should never have been started at all. We talked this morning. I started by asking how he first heard about the attacks.

Jeff Merkley: Well, I first heard about it from news media, like most Americans. There was very little conversation between the administration and Capitol Hill in advance.

Miller: From what I understand, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that he did give the so-called Gang of Eight – that’s the bipartisan leadership of the two chambers, as well as bipartisan heads of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees – advanced warning, but that’s not to seek approval. That’s just a skiff to give a small subset of lawmakers a heads up.

He also gave this as a justification for U.S. military action yesterday. He said this: “There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was we knew that if Iran was attacked – and we believe they would be attacked – that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

So according to this reasoning, Israel was going to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking us. Is that an imminent threat in your mind?

Merkley: Absolutely not. What we know is that Netanyahu had said he wanted to destroy some of the ballistic missiles, the larger ballistic missiles that provided some threat to Israel, and was asking for U.S. permission. Well, the U.S. was certainly in the position to say, “hell no, we’re not supporting you doing that.” We have all kinds of leverage with Israel. But the way that Marco Rubio framed it was we have no influence, and that essentially, America was drug into this war by Netanyahu. As if Netanyahu had led Trump around with a ring through his nose; that we were the subservient … a puppet being controlled by the head of Israel. That is an outrageous explanation, totally unacceptable.

Miller: You’ve called for a vote on the War Powers Resolution, and in fact, it seems that that’s going to happen this week, in both chambers. Before we get to the details of that, I’m curious in the bigger picture what it would take for you to be a yes vote for military authorization? Specifically with respect to Iran, what would you need to see or hear to say, “yes, as a member of Congress, as a member of the Senate, I do give you, the president, the Commander in Chief, congressional authorization to enter into a war?”

Merkley: Just to clarify, there are two different types of actions that Congress can take, and one amounts to a stop sign. That’s a resolution like the one we’ll vote on this week that says stop what you’re doing, a war powers resolution, and it can be written different ways. But the one we’re voting on says, “Mr. President, you must terminate this action right now. And you cannot renew it until you have gotten the green light.” And the green light is a separate thing called an authorization for the use of military force.

Your question pertains to the second: what would it take for me to authorize? And it would have to be an extraordinary set of circumstances involving an imminent threat to the United States with the intelligence that I found enormously persuasive. I do believe that those instances are quite rare in the world.

We did see, back in the second Iraq conflict, that President George W. Bush said, “I am going to do this the constitutional way.” The Constitution says it needs to be Congress that decides to go to war. So he came to Congress and he said, “here’s the case on weapons of mass destruction.” There was an extended debate over many, many months and then a vote in October of 2002. And the president didn’t actually take us to war until 2003, but it was done in accordance with the Constitution.

This conflict, this war was not launched in accordance with the Constitution. There was no request for authorization in advance. There was no imminent threat. And the president’s own explanation, or his secretary of state’s explanation, that we had to go to war because Israel was going to go to war, doesn’t pass muster at all.

So recognize that not only are these big issues regarding the chaos in the world [including] the cost in blood, we’ve already had American service members die; the cost in treasure, which it can be enormous, certainly less money available for health care, housing and education, more national debt; but also the chaos in the world because you don’t know, once you launch a conflict like this, where it’s going to end up. The president says, “well, it’ll be a five-week exercise.” Will it? All sorts of events in the world go spin off the anticipated trajectory, once a war is underway.

Miller: So let’s turn back to the votes under the War Powers Resolution. This is the 1973 law that says that if a president does start some kind of military action without congressional authorization, the operation has to end within 60 days. And within that time, Congress can vote, as you say, to put up a stop sign.

But it seems extremely unlikely that such a vote would pass, I think at this point either chamber, let alone get to veto-proof levels. There’s never been a veto of a War Powers Resolution vote in the last 50 years. So what do you see as the effects of the votes that we’re likely to see this week?

Merkley: The most important aspect of this vote is that it puts people on record where they stand and it creates a debate over the issues. It isn’t, at all, rising to the level of what Congress should be doing, which is holding a debate on an authorization before a war is launched. But under these circumstances, at least it creates a public debate and a vote to show where individuals stand.

This allows the public in a republic to say, “hey, member of Congress, my senator, my House member, I like what you’re doing,” or “I don’t like what you’re doing.” And that, in other words … at least it’s flexing the muscles of a democracy. Even though we understand that, in this case as you point out, it takes a simple majority to pass it, but it can be vetoed. Then it takes a supermajority to overcome a veto, and that seems extraordinarily unlikely.

Miller: Setting aside the question of justification, which we were talking about earlier, there is a related but, I think, separate issue of the goals of the war, the endgame. The administration has put forward a variety of objectives to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, to destroy its ballistic missile systems and its navy, to prevent it from supporting proxy groups. What do you make of these different reasons?

Merkley: Yes, it’s been quite a laundry list. I mean this conversation started with Netanyahu arguing to take out ballistic missiles. And indeed, that would have been a much more limited strike. It might have been something that occurred with negotiations to go on with Iran after. Realize that our attack occurred in the middle of the negotiations we were holding with Iran related to their nuclear program.

So it started with that conversation about ballistic missiles. Then other things were mentioned like, well, we want to sink their navy. We want to stop their ability to support proxies. We want to support the protesters who are showing opposition and we want to support regime change. Take out their leadership, get somebody else in charge. This is quite the soup of every possible idea. It shows there wasn’t one clear plan.

A clear plan would have involved: How do you want this to take shape after these strikes? Are you planning boots on the ground? Are you planning that we’re going to require them to set up some kind of organizing council that doesn’t involve the clergy? What is to come? Really what we see now is no ideas from the administration about where this is headed.

As Trump did mention that there were three people he thought would be reasonable leaders, so maybe we have some idea of people we want to install. But is that really the plan? It’s not clear that that’s the plan either. In other words, it’s very poor planning on the front end, very poor planning on the back end. To take such a significant action with so little preparation is vastly troubling.

Miller: Just briefly, what do you see as the best case and worst case scenarios going forward?

Merkley: The worst case is an extended war with a significant loss of life, a significant loss of treasure. Remember, the Afghanistan and the other Iraq wars involve some 7,000 deaths, some 50,000 significant injuries, some $8 trillion in national treasure.

Miller: Jeff, when you’re talking about those death injuries, you mean of U.S. service members, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan?

Merkley: That’s right. That’s correct. That’s just on our side of the equation. So that’s the worst. An extended war with massive losses that leads to chaos going forward.

I think it’s important to remember that we have really had a relationship with Iran as an ally. And some would even characterize it as a friend, in the 1950s, until we decided to assassinate their elected prime minister. His name was Mosaddegh. That action, in the short term, might have been viewed as successful in the view of folks like John Foster Dulles and so forth …

Miller: This was Cold War politics?

Merkley: Yes, Cold War politics. We felt like we now have a dictator there. It’s called the Shah of Iran, and he was very favorable to the West. In the short term, that might have looked like a victory. But what did it lead to? It led to what is now, over 70 years – 73 years – of a highly unproductive relationship with lots of problems for the United States. So it’s just to my point that the aftermath of these types of actions is hard to predict.

But you ask the best case. The best case, we vote for the War Powers Resolution, shut this thing down immediately, we go back to the negotiating table. We’ll resolve the issues over the nuclear program in Iran and they re-establish a leadership that is a whole lot better leadership than they had under the Ayatollah.

Miller: Senator Merkley, thanks very much.

Merkley: You’re very welcome.

Miller: Jeff Merkley is one of Oregon’s two Democratic U.S. Senators. We spoke earlier this morning.

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