US Congress passes final resolution to restrain Trump on Iran

Washington, March 12

The US Congress on Wednesday gave its final approval to a resolution to restrain President Donald Trump from attacking Iran after months of soaring tensions.                

The House of Representatives voted 227-186 to join the Senate in support of the resolution, which bars any military action against Iran without an explicit vote from Congress.

But the resolution is virtually certain to be vetoed by Trump, and the coalition of most Democrats and a handful of war-skeptic Republicans lacks the votes to override him.

The House voted moments after a rocket fired on a military base north of Baghdad killed an American soldier, a British soldier and a US contractor, in the deadliest attack on foreign forces in Iraq in several years.

A previous attack in December that killed a US contractor set off a chain of escalation after the United States blamed Iranian-aligned Iraqi Shiite militias.

On January 3, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem Soleimani, at the Baghdad airport.

Supporters of the resolution said they wanted to ensure that Congress has the unique power to declare war, as outlined in the US Constitution.

“There are a lot of countries in the world where one person makes the decision. They’re called dictators,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, the second highest-ranking Democrat in the House.

“Our Founding Fathers did not want dictators running America,” he said.

The Soleimani strike angered Iraqi leaders, who called for the departure of US forces, with some questioning whether Shiite militias carried out the attack in a country that still has virulently anti-Western Islamic State fighters. — AFP