U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talks about the remaining legislative business and the House of Representatives vote to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump during her final weekly news conference of 2019 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., December 19, 2019.
Aurora Samperio | NurPhoto | Getty Images
The House of Representatives will introduce and vote on a war powers resolution this week to limit President Donald Trump’s military actions regarding Iran, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Pelosi said that this week, the House “will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran.”
“This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate,” she said.
“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.”
On Friday, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine introduced a resolution to force a debate and vote in Congress in order to prevent further escalation of hostilities with Iran.
Democrats have complained that Trump did not notify lawmakers or seek advance approval before carrying out a U.S. airstrike on Baghdad that killed Iran’s top military commander, Qasem Soleimani.
His killing has caused already-tense relations between the U.S. and Iran to worsen and fueled concerns of outright war in the region. On Sunday, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution calling for foreign troops to be expelled from the country. Trump has threatened to slap sanctions on Iraq in retaliation.
Pelosi said in her letter to colleagues that the Trump administration’s “provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials” had 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,” she wrote.
While the resolution could win approval in the Democrat-controlled House, its passage in the majority Republican Senate is uncertain.
