Senator John Fetterman speaks to reporters following a briefing by Trump administration officials to members of the Senate on U.S. strikes on Iran, at the U.S. Capitol on March 3.
Photo: Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images
Senator John Fetterman’s willingness to buck his party has become a hallmark of his tenure in Congress. That tendency has never been more stark than in the aftermath of the United States’ air strikes in Iran, as Fetterman has given his full-throated support to the Trump administration’s actions in the Middle East as Democrats in both chambers are searching for ways to rein in the president.
On Wednesday, the Senate teed up a vote on a War Powers Resolution, which would require President Trump to seek congressional approval for any further action in the Iran conflict. The measure ultimately failed with a 53-to-47 vote, almost entirely along party lines. Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Democrats in supporting the resolution, while Fetterman broke from his party and joined Republicans in voting “no.”
Fetterman’s rejection of the measure was no surprise. The senator, who has long emphasized his support for Israel, quickly praised Operation Epic Fury after news of the first air strikes in the region broke on Saturday. “President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region. God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel,” he wrote. In the following days, Fetterman publicly questioned the growing dissent of his fellow Democrats to the Trump administration’s military efforts in the Middle East, accusing senators of “empty sloganeering” when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “Every member in the U.S. Senate agrees we cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. I’m baffled why so many are unwilling to support the only action to achieve that,” he wrote on X.
He specifically touted the killing of Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei in the early hours of the war in his support of the conflict, sharing a post of the supreme leader faced with the word ELIMINATED laid over it, adding the comment, “Let’s see who grieves for that garbage.”
And Fetterman reemphasized his point while speaking to a gaggle of reporters following the Senate’s briefing on the conflict on Wednesday. “Why can’t you just acknowledge that one of the most evil people on the face of the earth was erased? That’s a good thing,” the senator said.
Many of Fetterman’s colleagues exited the briefing on the Iran conflict feeling quite differently. In an interview with CNN, Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said that Trump officials had pointed to differing goals for the attacks, from dismantling Iran’s nuclear capabilities to a full-on regime change. “This is about as incoherent, incompetent, and confusing a rollout of military action overseas as I’ve ever seen,” Murphy said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose chamber is set to vote on its own War Powers Resolution on Thursday, was asked Monday about Fetterman’s assertion that the ongoing conflict doesn’t constitute an “illegal war” under the War Powers Act. In response, Jeffries replied, “Well, John Fetterman knows better. Article I of the Constitution explicitly provides Congress with the authority to declare war. Period, full stop.”
Fetterman has indicated in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that there is at least one limit to his support for the conflict. “I will be the first person to call it out and say, ‘Hey, that’s wrong. It’s taking too long,’” he said. “Sending boots on the ground, I would say ‘no.’ I would vote ‘no’ for that, absolutely.”
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