President Donald Trump suffered a massive setback on Tuesday (local time) after the Republican-controlled US Senate passed a resolution to stop his administration from continuing the conflict with Iran, which is quite unpopular among the American public.
The resolution was passed by a 50-48 vote, with as many as four Republican senators — Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), and Rand Paul (Kentucky) — voting in its support. Democrat Senate John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) voted against the resolution, though.
Further, Republican Senators Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania) and Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) weren’t present which further enabled in passing of the resolution. Notably, none of them had supported earlier war resolutions.
The resolution was earlier passed in the House of Representatives by 215-208 vote, with four Republicans voting in its favour.
Will the vote have an effect on Iran conflict?
Though the resolution was passed by a narrow margin, it will have “no significance” on the conflict, an official told CNN, while adding that it was passed only due to the absence of some Republicans, referring to McCormick and McConnell.
“Concurrent resolutions do not go to the president and have no force of law,” the official stated, while pointing out that though the resolution directs the Trump administration to stop hostilities against Iran, there have been “no hostilities from which to remove U.S. forces, as hostilities terminated with the ceasefire on April 7th.”
However, the Democrats have said that they would explore all legal possibilities “to ensure the executive complies with the will of Congress”, which they said is completely against the conflict.
“Congress never authorized this failed war, and the president certainly has no authority to continue it indefinitely without our consent as the constitution demands,” The Guardian quoted Greg Meeks, Democrat leader who sponsored Tuesday’s resolution, as saying.
The US-Iran war
Last week, the US and Iran signed a peace deal to end the over three-month long conflict. The peace treaty was signed digitally by Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian. Trump said he could have stopped the talks with Iran had it not agreed for inspection of its nuclear programme.
Iran’s nuclear programme remains the contentious point of the peace deal. Though Iran has stated that it is only for peaceful purposes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that the Middle East nation has highly enriched uranium, which could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
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