Iran has become the foreign policy thorn Donald Trump can’t seem to extract from his proverbial side as lawmakers and leaders from both parties express uncertainty over the president’s promised response to deadly protests there.
Trump flew to Detroit on Tuesday to deliver what he dubbed a “big speech” on the state of the U.S. economy as many voters continue to give him low marks on prices and other kitchen table issues. But unrest inside the Islamic Republic, where he ordered American military bombers to hit nuclear weapons-related targets last year, hung over his remarks.
Late last month, Iranian citizens across the country took to the streets to protest a range of issues, including a worsening economy, for which they blamed the government in Tehran. Iranian security forces responded with a violent crackdown, and the death toll has surpassed 2,400, according to Iranian human rights advocates.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump wrote on social media Tuesday morning. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
By the time Air Force One had ferried the commander in chief back to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Tuesday evening, reporters peppered him with questions about how he intended to respond to the Iranian government’s violent response to the protests.
“Iran is on my mind when I see the kind of death that is happening over there. … The killing looks like it’s significant, but we don’t know yet for certain,” he told reporters, saying he would be getting more information after the short helicopter ride back to the White House. “They’ve got to show humanity. They’ve got a big problem. … It would seem to me that they have been badly misbehaving,” he added later.
Following his administration’s military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, Trump has on several occasions contended that Iran’s top leaders wanted to negotiate an end to ongoing tensions. Talks began, but as reports and images of body bags and slain protesters began to emerge from Iran this month as internet services returned, Trump canceled any further negotiations.
Asked Tuesday evening about Iranian officials’ vows to retaliate if he used military force, Trump was defiant. “Iran said that the last time. I blew them up with the nuclear capability, which they don’t have any longer,” he said. “They better behave.”
On Wednesday, Trump said he’d been told “on good authority” that Iranian officials had ceased their lethal retaliation against protesters, but he offered no details. Pressed minutes later by reporters in the Oval Office, Trump did not rule out U.S. military strikes.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties have yet to get a clear read on just how the president intends to punish the Iranian government.
Some more hawkish members closely aligned with Trump have already endorsed new strikes on Iran.
“I would support removing the regime that’s killing their own people. Reports are coming out right now that it could be 12,000 to 20,000 [dead],” Senate Armed Services member Markwayne Mullin told CNN. Asked if he was supportive of a U.S. military operation aimed at taking out the Iranian government, the Oklahoma Republican said: “I am at this point. They’re murdering their own citizens.”
But later in the same interview, Mullin said U.S. officials were “not into the regime change. … This isn’t the Arab Spring.” He said he would expect “very coordinated direct strikes” should Trump decide to hit Iran, adding: “The president doesn’t bluff.”
But some congressional leaders have been less sure about what Trump might decide after the president threatened Iran’s government Tuesday morning.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday that he couldn’t “speak specifically. I mean, I don’t know, at this point, what the president might have in mind with respect to Iran.”
“But all of us here support the Iranian people and giving them a leadership and a government that promotes democracy in their country and gets away from the repression of human rights, which has been all too evident for the past almost half century now in Iran,” he said.
‘We don’t know’
Several top congressional Democrats say Trump lacks the power to strike Iran without first getting lawmakers’ collective blessing.
“The people of Iran are bravely standing up and speaking out against this brutal regime. But the president does not have the authority to go in. And this is part of this pattern. We don’t know if this [social media] post is policy, but it’s something that all of us are very mindful of,” House Democratic Conference Chair Pete Aguilar told reporters Tuesday.
“We don’t … want people exercising their opinions to die in the streets,” the California Democrat added. “But the president needs to consult with Congress on actions that involve the United States military.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer pointed to Trump’s threats directed at a handful of countries following the U.S. military action to capture and arrest Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro: “Who would have thought he’d start talking about military intervention in Iran after he talked about it in Venezuela and Colombia and Greenland. … It’s got to be debated by Congress.”
“It just shows you what a bubble this president is in,” the New York Democrat said. “It’s amazing he’s concerned about the protesters in Iran but not concerned about the damage that ICE is doing to the protesters and other Americans in Minnesota and other places.”
A Fox News poll from last month found foreign policy not a high priority for voters. Forty-two percent cited high prices when asked what issues Trump should be paying more attention to; 2 percent picked foreign policy.
According to a more recent Economist/YouGov survey, 41 percent of Americans said U.S. military interventions more often “worsen” situations in the countries where they occur. Twenty percent said they improved conditions, while another 20 percent said they neither improved nor worsened things.
Such poll results, which Trump has been known to monitor closely, may have stopped the commander in chief from further saber rattling early Wednesday morning ahead of Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s meeting with Danish and Greenlandic officials about the president’s call for the U.S. to “own” the large Arctic territory.
“The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to his proposed U.S. missile defense shield. “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.”
Speaking outside the Danish Embassy in Washington following their meeting with Vance and Rubio, Greenlandic and Danish officials held firm against Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland — but they left open the door to some kind of deal with the White House.
“For us, ideas that would not respect territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the right of self-determination of the Greenlandic people are, of course, totally unacceptable,” Danish Foreign Minster Lars Løkke Rasmussen said. “We, therefore, still have a fundamental disagreement. But we also agree to disagree.”
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