After 60 Days, Republican Patience for the Iran War Is Wearing Thin

Months into the operation and with midterms looming, some lawmakers are calling for Congress to restrain the president’s war power or set terms for bringing the conflict to a close.

By Megan Mineiro

Key Republicans in Congress are growing impatient about the complex and costly conflict in the Middle East as the war reaches its 60-day mark, pivoting after weeks of deferring to President Trump to a more skeptical posture.

While Republican leaders continue to express strong backing for the operation, the shift could lay the groundwork for the G.O.P.-led Congress, which has ceded much of its power to Mr. Trump and declined to exercise any oversight of the war so far, to force a debate on the matter in the coming days and pressure the administration to set the conditions and timeline for a swift withdrawal.

It is unfolding six months before midterm elections in which Republicans risk losing control of Congress, faced with a tough political landscape made more challenging by the unpopular war and the resulting rise in gas prices and consumer goods. Democrats, many of whom have decried the war from the beginning as illegal and an egregious violation of the separation of powers, routinely cite G.O.P. backing for it as evidence that the party is not focused on the needs of Americans.

The increasing nervousness among Republicans has coincided with a statutory deadline reached on Friday for the president to ask Congress for permission to continue the war, which he has declined to do. It also comes as concern about the cost of the conflict is rising and lawmakers are bracing to be asked to approve a request in the tens of billions of dollars or higher to pay for it.

This week alone, one Republican facing a tough re-election fight, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, flipped her position and for the first time voted with Democrats on a failed resolution to halt the war, after weeks of expressing concern about the conflict but opposing similar measures to end it. Another Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, threatened to force a vote in the coming weeks to authorize the operation in order to place constraints on the president and force him to settle on exit criteria.

And several others in the G.O.P. balked at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim on Thursday — which Mr. Trump appeared to echo in a letter to Congress on Friday — that the president did not need to seek approval from the legislative branch to continue the war past the 60-day mark because of the cease-fire agreement he had forged with Iran. The defense secretary said that pact had effectively stopped the clock laid out in the War Powers Resolution, a Vietnam-era law meant to limit the president’s power to engage in protracted, unauthorized wars.

Mr. Trump asserted in his letter on Friday, which appeared to be an effort to dodge the 60-day requirement, that hostilities in Iran had “terminated,” even as a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, an act of war under international law, continued and the buildup of U.S. armed forces in the region remained. That seemed unlikely to placate Republicans who have stepped up their calls for a definitive plan for ending the conflict.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said if Mr. Trump failed to begin withdrawing forces from Iran, or to make a compelling legal argument for ignoring the statute, Congress would need to proactively pass legislation authorizing the war.

“And I don’t really want to do that, because I don’t want to open up further conflict,” said Mr. Hawley, a constitutional lawyer, said on Thursday. “I want to wind it down.”

The developments demonstrated that Republicans, who argued time and again that the president had open-ended authority to carry out what he initially characterized as a swift and decisive war, are rethinking that position as the war enters its third month.

While Mr. Trump’s senior advisers are in talks to end the hostilities, many of the goals Mr. Trump laid out at the outset have yet to be achieved, and it remains unclear whether the cease-fire will hold, or if the president will order bombardments to resume. Iran’s nuclear capabilities have not been eliminated, the government led by Shiite clerics remains intact and it retains the ability to strike America and its allies throughout the region.

“While the administration may point to ongoing negotiations, events on the ground and the rhetoric coming out of Tehran tell a different story,” said Ms. Murkowski, who has been frustrated for weeks by the lack of response from the White House to basic questions from Congress about the war.

From the Senate floor on Thursday, she threatened to force a vote this month on a bill that would authorize the war but was “not a blank check,” requiring the president to provide “metrics for success, notice of any changes in objectives” and exit criteria. The measure, which is still being drafted, has no chance of becoming law, but would force a debate on continuing the war and require senators to go on the record for or against authorizing it, something they have labored to avoid since the fighting began on Feb. 28.

“The president must have flexibility to respond to emergencies and imminent threats, and he does,” Ms. Murkowski said. “But those are not ongoing military campaigns like we find ourselves currently mired in.”

The 1973 law forbids the president from ordering American forces into a conflict without congressional approval unless the United States is under attack, and gives him 60 days to terminate such an operation if he does not secure authorization. After that, the War Powers Resolution says he must remove troops from hostilities or request a one-time 30-day extension, unless Congress votes to approve the continued use of military force. The legal clock began on March 2, the day Mr. Trump formally notified Congress of the military campaign, ticking down to the end of the 60-day period on Friday.

Past presidents of both parties have sought to get around the requirement by arguing that the law does not apply to the military operation they are directing. Mr. Trump pronounced the whole thing unconstitutional.

“I don’t think that it’s constitutional, what they are asking for,” Mr. Trump said on Friday, declaring that the United States was on its way to “a big victory” in Iran. “These are not patriotic people that are asking.”

Some Republicans said Thursday they wanted to see a legal opinion from the White House backing up Mr. Hegseth’s assertion that the statutory clock had effectively stopped, an argument that legal scholars on both sides of the ideological spectrum quickly rejected.

Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said on Thursday that he would not support continued fighting unless Congress fulfilled its constitutional role of approving continued hostilities.

The War Powers Resolution “is clear that after 60 days, military action must begin to wind down unless Congress provides formal authorization,” Mr. Curtis said in a statement after Mr. Hegseth’s comments. The Vietnam War, he added, “serves as a permanent reminder of the devastation that occurs when lines of authority are blurred or ignored.”

Ms. Collins also said the 60-day timeline was clear.

“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” she said in a statement, adding that approval of continued fighting was contingent on “a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close.”

Mr. Hawley said he interpreted the law to mean that the president’s unfettered power to continue hostilities ended on May 1, and called on the White House to put any differing interpretation into writing to Congress.

Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican who previously voted to debate Mr. Trump’s power to wage war, also sounded deeply skeptical.

“Does the cease-fire still count if they don’t cease firing? I don’t know,” he said on Thursday. “Is there any legal precedent to this?”

Mr. Trump told Congress in his Friday letter that “there has been no exchange in fire between United States forces and Iran” since April 7, meaning that the hostilities he began on Feb. 28 “have terminated.”

The argument may not satisfy skeptical Republicans, like Mr. Young, who had said that the White House should give lawmakers an explanation of its novel reading of the War Powers Resolution.

“We’re looking for a very strong legal argument,” Mr. Young said.

Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.