{"id":714153,"date":"2026-06-04T08:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/714153\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T08:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:42:09","slug":"u-s-houses-stunning-rebuke-to-trump-threatens-american-position-in-talks-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/714153\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. House\u2019s stunning rebuke to Trump threatens American position in talks with Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution on Wednesday to block President Donald Trump from continuing the war against Iran.Kylie Cooper\/Reuters<\/p>\n

This is not the normal fare on Capitol Hill, where both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans and where GOP lawmakers have been faithful foot-soldiers in Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> various wars.<\/p>\n

But in a remarkable, and significant, expression of impatience that verged on rebellion, the House of Representatives voted to order Mr. Trump to cease the war in Iran<\/a>, which he is waging without congressional approval. <\/p>\n

The juxtaposition of the growing opposition to the war, the President\u2019s falling approval ratings, persistent high gasoline prices and public concerns about inflation gave four Republicans the oxygen to cast a stunning rebuke to Mr. Trump and to give possible new shape to November\u2019s midterm congressional elections. The final vote was 215 to 208<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet perhaps of more global consequence is that this sharp expression of disapproval of an American president came while Mr. Trump\u2019s negotiators are engaged in critical talks with a wartime foe, potentially endangering the American position in those discussions. <\/p>\n

There was no diminution in American, or more precisely Allied, resolve in the Second World War, one reason why Germany surrendered with little geopolitical capital to shape the postwar world. But American resolve in Vietnam three decades later was substantially eroded, significantly by demonstrations in the country\u2019s streets but, perhaps as critically, or even more importantly, in the collapse of congressional approval for continuing the conflict.<\/p>\n

There are few demonstrations in American streets this spring, but the combination of declining support for the war and a decline in congressional support stands as a threat to Mr. Trump as he seeks to preserve a Republican majority on Capitol Hill even as he seeks to assure a peace with Iran. <\/p>\n

Adding to Mr. Trump\u2019s challenge: satisfying as least some of the myriad goals he has set forth since the conflict began in late February. The multiplicity of those goals makes the satisfying of all of them, or at least a respectable fraction of them, more difficult.<\/p>\n

The practical implications of the House vote are murky. The Senate hasn\u2019t approved a similar matter. Presidents often have defied Congress before, and there are ways, even under the War Powers Act, that Mr. Trump could continue military engagement. <\/p>\n

Even so, according to Frank Zagare, a University of Buffalo specialist on foreign policy, \u201cThis puts the Trump administration in a very tricky position.\u201d He added that if the Senate went along, \u201cUnless they can come up with something creative, it suggests to me that the U.S. eventually may have to withdraw the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Capitol Hill defeat for the President \u2013 it can be cast in no gentler terms \u2013 came after he barely escaped suffering a similar embarrassment two weeks ago, when House leaders put off a vote on a measure to curb Mr. Trump\u2019s latitude in the Iran conflict. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who controls the traffic onto the floor of the chamber, pulled the measure out of worries about Republican defections.<\/p>\n

Since then, Mr. Trump\u2019s position with lawmakers has diminished measurably. Though MAGA-oriented Republicans whom he has endorsed generally have been victorious in this spring\u2019s primary elections, that has not always been the case; just this week his choice for the Republican finalist in the race for the governor\u2019s mansion on Des Moines\u2019 Terrace Hill in Iowa, three-term Representative Randy Feenstra, was defeated.<\/p>\n

But even his victorious choices, especially challenges to Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, have aggravated Republicans in Congress. The President\u2019s interference in the primaries has liberated the lawmakers who have been defeated to vote against the President without fear of future retribution. It has also angered some of their colleagues, potentially freeing them to break with Mr. Trump. Some MAGA members of Congress, many of them opposed to the very kind of military action that Mr. Trump has engaged in this year in the Caribbean and the Middle East, already were nursing feelings of alienation. <\/p>\n

This comes as a New York Times\/Siena University poll showed that 64 per cent of Americans believed the decision to say yes to war in Iran was a mistake. Slightly more than a fifth of Republicans said they felt that way. <\/p>\n

Besides the multiplicity of goals the Americans have \u2013 first regime change, then the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, followed by an end to Iranian support for surrogates in the region, and always an end to the country\u2019s drive for a nuclear weapon \u2013 Mr. Trump also faces the determination of Iran\u2019s leadership to win a symbolic if not a real victory over the most powerful military force in the world.<\/p>\n

While the United States has been more successful in the conventional sphere of bombing and missile attacks, Iran has been successful in artfully using its position along the Strait, passageway of a fifth of the globe\u2019s oil, as a weapon. By doing so, it focused the U.S. negotiators onto an issue \u2013 free passage of the seas, a bedrock American principle since the Barbary and Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century \u2013 that wasn\u2019t present at the start of the conflict. The result temporarily pushed the nuclear issue from the centre of the war aims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always the possibility that Trump may not pay much attention to this,\u201d said Paul M. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. \u201cHe\u2019s been defying the norms of American politics since he became president.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution on Wednesday to block…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22158,135829,43,44,9257,41,39,42,40,3277,33221,2393,1971],"class_list":["post-714153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-democrats","tag-gop","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-republicans","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-us-politics","tag-washington-dc","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}