Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday stressed that the US operation Iran would be “limited in scope” and “limited in objective,” offering his first public remarks on Capitol Hill on the rapidly intensifying Middle East conflict.
“I think that operation will be wound up quickly, by God’s grace it will,” Johnson said in response to a question from CNN’s Manu Raju, immediately after attending a classified “Gang of Eight” briefing for top lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Johnson also said he believed that the joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran this weekend — which have since spilled into the wider region — did not amount to an official start of a war.
“It’s not a declaration of war,” Johnson told reporters, arguing that strikes were “defensive in nature and in design.”
Johnson’s remarks echoed earlier comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stressed that the US operation was “defensive,” arguing that Israel had planned to strike Iran — and would have triggered immediate retaliation against the US regardless.
“And if we had waited to respond before acting first, then those losses would have been far greater than if we had done what we did,” Johnson said.
“If the president, the commander chief, had not acted as he did, those same officials would have been hauled in here by members of Congress and asked them, Why in the world, they waited it,” Johnson said, adding: “I am convinced that they did the right thing.”
The speaker predicted that GOP leaders had the votes to stifle a Democratic-led war powers effort, which would amount to a major symbolic rebuke of the president’s military push if it passed.