Lawmakers balk at Trump threat against ‘whole civilization’ in Iran war

WASHINGTON (CN) — Members of Congress sounded the alarm Tuesday as President Donald Trump issued a dire threat to Iran, in which he vowed to wipe out a “whole civilization” in the U.S. war with the country unless its leaders agreed to a peace deal.

The White House has set a Tuesday night deadline for negotiations with Tehran to end the monthlong conflict. Trump has threatened military strikes against critical Iranian infrastructure, such as civilian power plants, if the U.S. and Iran fail to reach a deal that would see the regime drop its ongoing blockade of oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

And, with hours to go until his self-imposed deadline, the president gave a stark warning to Iran that stunned lawmakers on Capitol Hill and even some of his own former allies.

“A while civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote in a Tuesday morning post on his social media platform Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

The president followed the cryptic threat by saying he hoped “different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail” in Tehran and that “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen” to prevent further U.S. escalation in the war.

“We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World,” Trump added.

Vice President JD Vance, speaking at an event in Budapest on Tuesday, made a similarly ominous statement about forthcoming U.S. military action in Iran.

“They’ve got to know that we have tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use,” said Vance. “The president of the United States can decide to use them and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course of conduct.”

Following the president’s post, Iran reportedly cut off direct communication with U.S. negotiators seeking to reach a deal before the administration’s 8 p.m. deadline, though talks have not completely ended.

Members of Congress, out of Washington for a second week amid Easter recess, slammed Trump for what they said was a reckless and erratic threat. Some called on Congress to reconvene early and vote on a resolution forcing the president to end hostilities against Iran.

“This is an extremely sick person,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.”

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the upper chamber’s intelligence committee, panned Trump’s comments as “rantings” and suggested the president hadn’t settled yet on a course of action ahead of his Tuesday night deadline.

“Is this really the way world affairs should be dictated in the 21st century?” Warner said in a video message posted to X.

Rhode Island Representative Seth Magaziner said following the president’s post that Congress should reconvene and “immediately” vote to end the war against Iran. “The president’s enablers must wake up to the fact that he is becoming increasingly erratic and dangerous, and our country needs new leadership.”

And Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib said lawmakers should invoke the 25th Amendment — a constitutional failsafe allowing Congress to remove a president deemed unfit for office — against Trump.

It wasn’t just Democrats, however, who appeared concerned on Tuesday about how Trump planned to escalate hostilities against Tehran if peace talks continued to stall.

Speaking to Just the News, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he was “hoping and praying” the president’s rhetoric about targeting civilian infrastructure was “bluster.”

“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure,” said Johnson, a staunch supporter of the administration. “We are not at war with the Iranian people — we are trying to liberate them.”

Former Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, herself a one-time ally of the president and now one of his harshest critics from the political right, joined Democrats and some other conservative commentators in calling for Trump’s removal from office via the 25th Amendment.

“Not a single bomb has dropped on America,” she said. “We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”

Still, other Republicans in Congress said they backed Trump’s campaign against Iran and downplayed the severity of his threats. New York Representative Mike Lawler said on CNN Tuesday morning the president wasn’t literally talking about “ending a civilization” but was referring to his earlier pledge to target power plants, roads and bridges used by Iran’s civilian population.

“That will cripple the Iranian regime and certainly their economy,” said Lawler. “That is not something we want to do because, as Ron Johnson said rightly, we are not at war with the Iranian people … but if the president has to take necessary action to strike their energy infrastructure, that is going to cripple the regime — that is what he is talking about.”

North Carolina Representative Pat Harrigan claimed on Fox News that, despite his comments, Trump was simultaneously attempting to deescalate with Iran while putting pressure on other U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China.

“President Trump is actually trying to turn the temperature down,” said Harrigan. “He’s absolutely trying to put the screws to our strategic adversaries, which is China and Russia. He’s doing that by taking off their periphery allies in Venezuela and now Iran.”

The cryptic rhetoric from both Trump and Vance — particularly the vice president’s comments about “tools” the administration was willing to use — spurred speculation about whether the White House was weighing deploying nuclear weapons against Iran.

But the Trump administration has pushed back on those claims, saying Tuesday that “literally nothing” Vance said suggested a nuclear strike was on the horizon.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have in recent weeks attempted, unsuccessfully, to rein in Trump’s war powers amid his administration’s aggressive military action against Tehran and the January operation inside Venezuela which saw the capture of its now-deposed president, Nicolas Maduro. Republicans have so far blocked Democrat-led efforts to force the White House to cease hostilities under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

It’s unclear whether any resolution to end Trump’s war in Iran would have the necessary support in Congress — but it also appears unlikely lawmakers could take any such action this week. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not immediately return a request for comment on whether he’d entertain a request to reconvene the upper chamber to vote on a war powers resolution.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss