House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House of Representatives will hold a vote on a war powers resolution this week in an attempt to restrict President Donald Trump’s military action against Iran.
Pelosi released a letter to her House colleagues Sunday, and her resolution falls in line with a similar one that Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, introduced to the Senate on Friday.
“It reasserts Congress’s long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,” Pelosi wrote in her letter to the House.
Trump did not inform lawmakers before commencing a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, early Friday, which infuriated many Congressional Democrats.
Soleimani’s death has worsened an already tense situation between the U.S. and Iran that has created a new fear of all-out war in the Middle East. The action in Baghdad pushed Iraq’s parliament to pass a resolution to expel U.S. troops from the country. Trump has threatened a new round of sanctions against Iraq if they go through with the removal of U.S. troops.
“If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” Trump said from Air Force One on Sunday. “It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”
Pelosi, in her letter, called the Trump administration’s action against Iran “provocative and disproportionate,” and said she thinks it has endangered U.S. “service members, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.”
“As Members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe. For this reason, we are concerned that the Administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Congress’s war powers granted to it by the Constitution,” Pelosi wrote.
The resolution has a good chance to pass in the Democrat-controlled House, but passing the Republican Senate isn’t as likely.