The US military has acknowledged the deaths of six service members

The US military has acknowledged the deaths of six service members, while the Iranian Red Crescent Society said more than 500 people have been killed in the country.

Reactions to the administration’s explanation for entering the war split along party lines, with Republicans rushing to defend Trump’s gambit while Democrats condemned what they view as an unnecessary conflict with unclear goals.

“This is Trump’s war. This is a war of choice. He has no strategy, he has no endgame,” the Senate’s Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said before going into the briefing.

As he exited, Schumer said that lawmakers present asked “a whole lot of questions” but he found the officials’ responses “completely and totally insufficient. In fact, at least to me, that briefing raised many more questions than it answered.”

On Monday night, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told Fox News that Iran had been building new underground sites “that would make their ballistic missile programs and their atomic bomb programs immune within months”.

“If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future,” he said.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon.

In recent interviews with news outlets, Trump has outlined various goals in the war, including destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and their navy, preventing the country from developing a nuclear weapon and cutting off Tehran’s support of proxy forces elsewhere in the Middle East.

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and close Trump ally, defended the president’s course of action, saying he had ordered a “defensive operation”.

“Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deem to be an existential threat,” Johnson said.

While the war’s objective, he said, was not “to go in and take out the regime”, he nonetheless cheered the ayatollah’s death.

“That happened and in my estimation, that is a great development for freedom loving people around the world,” Johnson told reporters, speaking alongside the Republican chairs of the House intelligence and appropriations committee – the latter’s presence an indication that lawmakers may soon be asked to approve additional defense funding necessitated by the war.

Even if Congress were to approve the resolution, Trump could veto it, and Congress could override that only with a two-thirds majority vote.

Previous war powers resolutions introduced in this Congress have been voted down, and Johnson said he was confident the latest one would not pass the House.

#iran #war #vance #rubio #netanyahu #israel