Iran Press/America: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Wednesday that the House would vote on Thursday to force President Trump to quickly wind down military action against Iran unless he is given explicit authorization from Congress, opening what promised to be a searing debate over presidential war powers.
Pelosi issued the statement as lawmakers breathed a sigh of relief on Capitol Hill after Trump said he would back away from any military escalation against Tehran. But congressional Democrats, skeptical of the administration’s case for the terrorist strike by a drone last week that assassinated Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani and dissatisfied with the rationale Trump’s team offered for conducting it, pledged to press ahead with their efforts to rein in the president’s war-making authority, The New York Times reported.
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They said the vote on Thursday would be on a measure that would require that Trump cease all military action against Iran unless Congress votes to approve it. Such a measure could face an uphill climb in the Republican-controlled Senate, but on Wednesday, two Republicans signaled they were inclined to support it, holding open the possibility of a razor-thin vote. Either way, it is certain to ignite a fierce debate over Trump’s strategy on Iran and Congress’s role in curtailing a president’s ability to wage war.
“Members of Congress have serious, urgent concerns about the administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran and about its lack of strategy moving forward,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our concerns were not addressed by the president’s insufficient War Powers Act notification and by the administration’s briefing today.”
In the early hours of January 8, the IRGC's aerospace unit launched a successful attack against US forces in Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq and another in Erbil, in the north of the country.
The attack came in response to a US terrorist drone strike days earlier that martyred one of Iran's top Generals, the former Commander of IRGC's elite Quds Force, Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei described the attack as a “slap in the face” and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called it a "proportionate measure" which came "in self-defense".
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