The U.S. House of Representatives voted down a war powers resolution that would have restricted military operations against Iran on Thursday.
The resolution failed 212-219 along mostly party lines. Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) voted for the motion, while four Democrats, Reps. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) voted against it.
Massie introduced the measure with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in June during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran and shortly before U.S. President Donald Trump’s June 22 strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) were among the Democrats who said that they would oppose the resolution before Trump launched combat operations against Iran on Saturday but who voted for the measure on Thursday.
Khanna thanked Gottheimer for casting a “hard and principled vote with us” after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) whipped the Democratic caucus to back the motion.
Gottheimer wrote in reply that he and Khanna were “nowhere near on the same page and have very different principles.”
“I believe in combatting the Iranian regime, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” the New Jersey congressman said. “We must win and crush Iran.”
Gottheimer wrote in a statement explaining his vote that the defeat of a similar war powers resolution in the Senate on Wednesday turned the House vote from “an unacceptable call that could put our troops in harm’s way” into “a clear call for this Administration to articulate the goals for the mission, the end game and their plan to avoid a protracted conflict.”
Moskowitz wrote shortly before the vote that he had opposed “preemptively” voting on the resolution when the Trump administration was still in negotiations with Iran, but that the administration’s failure to seek approval for military action encroached on the constitutional powers of the legislature.
“The resolution that we will be voting on this week reclaims Congressional authority over the declaration of war,” Moskowitz wrote. “Congress is on the verge of irrelevancy. We have done this to ourselves, and no one is coming to save us if we don’t show some sign of life.”
Landsman, Golden, Cuellar and Gottheimer were among the Democrats who introduced an alternative war powers resolution on Tuesday over concerns that the Khanna-Massie resolution “requires the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, even while Iran is actively targeting American troops, assets, embassies and our allies across the region.”
That resolution is expected to come up for a vote at the end of March.
