WASHINGTON DC - US senators offered sharply contrasting assessments of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran on Tuesday, with Republicans telling Rudaw that pressure on Tehran should continue and be tied to stricter nuclear concessions, while Democrats censured the conflict as an unnecessary war launched without a clear strategy or endgame.
US Republican Senator Ted Cruz said that any agreement to end the war with Iran “needs to be the right deal,” backing President Trump’s “two red lines” for negotiations and insisting that Iran maintain “zero [uranium] enrichment” and surrender its entire stockpile of enriched uranium.
“I think we should continue to hold the line,” Cruz underlined.
Meanwhile, US Democratic Senator Mark Warner criticized the Trump administration for entering the war with “no plan.”
“Because you start a war with no plan, it was a war of choice,” Warner said, adding, “Iran posed no immediate threat and we see that now eighty plus days later where we still have an awful regime, there's no plan to get rid of the enriched uranium, they still have missile capability, and it seems like they now have indirect control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
The US senators’ made the remarks on the sidelines of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offering a critical update on the Iran war, US negotiating demands, and the current state of Iranian leadership.
Rubio said Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports will remain in place as long as Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed.
"If they're gonna shut down the Strait for everybody, we're gonna shut the Strait for them," he noted, further describing the US naval blockade on Iranian ports as “a very effective,” noting that by “seizing sanctioned vessels” linked to Iran's shadow fleet in the Indo-Pacific has been impactful as well.
Nevertheless, Rubio said, "If they open the Strait, we will lift our blockade," adding that ships should be able to transit the strategic waterway "without being fired on and without paying a toll."
He also added that “if Iran wants to be able to move its oil again… they would have to reopen it," warning that "if they refuse to do so, then we have other options available to us, but we would prefer to negotiate."
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