(ABC News) President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Saturday, with daytime strikes in the joint U.S.-Israel attack targeting military and government sites, officials said.
The massive operation sparked threats of retaliation by Iran and reports of incoming missiles and drones around the region.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” Trump said in a video statement.
U.S. officials said the operation could potentially last days, and Trump acknowledged that there may be American casualties.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian were both targeted in the U.S.-Israeli attack, according to three sources briefed.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement on President Donald Trump’s announcement of wide-ranging military strikes inside Iran:
“Overnight, the president conducted expansive U.S. strikes – not limited to nuclear or missile infrastructure but extending to a broad set of targets, including senior Iranian leadership – marking a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East.
“Iran’s leadership has long supported terrorism across the region, undermined regional stability, continued to advance its nuclear ambitions, and brutally repressed its own people. But acknowledging those realities does not relieve any president of the responsibility to act within the law, with a clear strategy, and with Congress.
“The American people have seen this playbook before – claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building. We owe it to our service members, and to every American family, to ensure that we are not repeating the mistakes of the past. The president owes the country clear answers: What is the objective? What is the strategy to prevent escalation? And how does this make Americans safer?
“By the president’s own words, ‘American heroes may be lost.’ That alone should have demanded the highest level of scrutiny, deliberation, and accountability, yet the president moved forward without seeking congressional authorization. The Constitution is clear: the decision to take this nation to war rests with Congress, and launching large-scale military operations – particularly in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States – raises serious legal and constitutional concerns. Congress must be fully briefed, and the administration must come forward with a clear legal justification, a defined end state, and a plan that avoids dragging the United States into yet another costly and unnecessary war.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is calling on the Senate to return to Washington immediately to vote on a war powers resolution to check the president’s authority to wage war with Iran, calling the military action “idiotic.”
“Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East? Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up during his first term?,” Kaine said in a statement Saturday.
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