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The United States Senate approved this Tuesday, for the first time, a resolution regarding war powers to block military action against Iran, in a 50-48 vote that marked an unexpected turn after nine previous failed attempts.
The measure, of a concurrent nature, orders President Donald Trump to withdraw military forces from the conflict with Iran and serves as a symbolic but politically significant reprimand from Congress to the administration.
The result was partly made possible by the absence of two Republican senators: Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, who was recently hospitalized for an undisclosed issue, and Dave McCormick from Pennsylvania, which left the Republican Party without a sufficient majority to block the initiative.
Four dissenting Republican senators —Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana)— voted in favor alongside the Democrats, while Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only member of his party to vote against it.
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, was emphatic in his assessment: "Time and time again, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war, not with the American people."
Schumer described the conflict as "Trump's historical mistake in Iran," stating that "it will become a part of history as one of the worst foreign policy incursions the United States has ever made."
The House of Representatives had approved its own version of the resolution in early June, with a vote of 215-208, with four Republicans joining all the Democrats despite the objections of the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Trump then reacted by calling those lawmakers "Attention Seekers" and labeling their vote as "unpatriotic" on Truth Social.
Although the concurrent resolution does not require the president's signature and its legal force is debated, a Democratic advisor in the House pointed out to CNN that they believe the measure would be binding, which would make its scope a legal matter pending resolution.
The background of the vote is a war that the U.S. and Israel began on February 28 with attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities, without prior authorization from Congress, and whose total cost experts estimate to be around 100 billion dollars.
The conflict is in a phase of fragile ceasefire following the agreement that Trump signed with Iran in France last week, which sets a 60-day timeframe to negotiate a definitive nuclear agreement.
This pact has generated tensions even within the Republican Party, primarily due to the controversial fund of 300 billion dollars allocated for the reconstruction of Iran, a figure significantly higher than the 1.7 billion that former President Barack Obama returned to Tehran in the 2015 agreement.
"I believe that President Trump is receiving very bad advice regarding Iran," stated Republican Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, on his audio program after the terms of the agreement were made known.
Parallelly, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared before the Capitol this Tuesday to request approximately 80 billion dollars in supplementary funds aimed at replenishing munitions and military reserves, at a time when many Americans are feeling the pinch of rising gasoline prices and the cost of living.
The Democratic senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, who has led his party's efforts to pass these resolutions, argued that the current period of relative stability is the right time for Congress to assess "what the next chapter" of the conflict should be, and that the war cannot be allowed to resume without legislative involvement.
Trump is scheduled to meet this week with Republican senators at the Capitol, while Vice President JD Vance continues negotiations with Iran abroad and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday to soothe the concerns of Arab allies regarding the provisional agreement reached with Tehran.
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