Democrats can’t do much to make Trump end the Iran war soon

JD Vance blames the war in Iran for the Republicans’ election disaster on Tuesday and a big majority in the incoming Congress opposes the conflict. But there is little they can do to end it.

Vance blames Trump’s war

While Republicans were licking their wounds on Wednesday as they counted the cost of the midterms in the House, the Senate and statehouses and governors’ mansions across the country, vice-president JD Vance was ready with an explanation for the rout.

“The reason we lost is the war,” he said in a lengthy post on X.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

Vance was a public supporter of the initial attacks on Iran last year, but his allies briefed the media later that he had advised Trump against the war and he has favoured a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Last month, he wrote to Iranian national security chief Mohsen Rezaei offering to lead direct negotiations, a move Tehran welcomed as a positive step.

Qatar is mediating between the US and Iran over a proposal to resume direct talks following mutual confidence-building measures including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. But Washington on Monday attacked Iranian targets on Qeshm, an island at the mouth of the strait, and admitted it had been engaged in covert strikes against Iran for weeks.

The US constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, and from the end of the 18th century until the second World War it used this authority to launch wars and to end them. US forces took part in the Korean War in the 1950s under a United Nations mandate but without formal congressional approval and since then presidents have relied on authorisations for the use of military force from Congress.

The Vietnam War prompted Congress in 1973 to pass the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify the legislature within two days of an attack and obliges a withdrawal within two or three months if lawmakers do not authorise the war.

Successive presidents have dodged the act, claiming it did not apply to actions such as Barack Obama’s bombing of Libya in 2011 or Trump’s strikes in Yemen in 2019. Even if the incoming Congress wanted to invoke the War Powers Act, the Democrats would struggle to secure the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a presidential veto.

They could try to defund military operations directly connected to Iran or withhold approval for the overall defence budget next year unless Trump ends the war. But these steps are politically risky and none is likely to be effective until the middle of 2027, leaving the president free to prosecute the war for months.

In the meantime, outgoing Republican congressman Thomas Massie could force the House of Representatives to vote next week on the impeachment of defence secretary Pete Hegseth. If the House approved the motion, the Senate would be obliged to debate it immediately and the impeachment debate could take up much of the outgoing Congress’s remaining weeks in office.

Trump said on Wednesday that Hegseth was doing a good job and that he had no plans to follow the example of George W Bush, who fired Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary following a similar midterm disaster in 2006. But it makes sense for the president to get rid of Hegseth sooner rather than later, not least because his successor as defence secretary has a better chance of being confirmed by the current Congress than by the one that will be sworn in next January.

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