(JTA) — President Donald Trump vetoed legislation that would require a president to seek authorization from Congress before approving military action against Iran.
The resolution was introduced earlier in the year in the wake of a U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force — the wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that carries out Iranian operations beyond the country’s borders. Critics of the strike said it could have led to an armed conflict between the United States and Iran.
Iran responded to the assassination, while Soleimani was visiting Iraq, with a ballistic missile attack on a base in western Iraq that housed U.S. troops. More than 100 U.S. service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the aftermath.
Iran has threatened that a U.S. attack on its assets could lead to retaliatory attacks on Israel.
“This was a very insulting resolution, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on November 3 by dividing the Republican Party,” Trump said in a statement issued by his press secretary. “The few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands.”
Trump said the resolution “would have greatly harmed the President’s ability to protect the United States, its allies, and its partners. The resolution implies that the President’s constitutional authority to use military force is limited to defense of the United States and its forces against imminent attack. That is incorrect. We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognizes that the President must be able to anticipate our adversaries’ next moves and take swift and decisive action in response. That’s what I did!”
