Tight spot....

Trump's renewed Iran strikes put Republicans in a bind

“He’s screwing us into political oblivion,” said one House member.

By Mark Satter, Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O'Brien and Leo Shane III

President Donald Trump’s declaration that the ceasefire with Iran has ended is forcing Republicans to choose between crossing their president or backing a conflict that could sink their party ahead of the midterms.

The president’s on-and-off attempts to secure a peace deal have divided GOP lawmakers as they fight to hang onto control of Congress. Party leaders firmly backed Trump’s bid to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions, though they cautiously praised a memorandum of understanding signed with Tehran last month that largely punted on the nuclear question.

But the latest resumption of fighting poses economic risks some GOP incumbents fear could cost them in November, including higher gas prices during the year’s busiest travel season. And they worry — as the cycle of war and fragile peace plays out — that the president cares little about their political fate.

“He and the Iranian leadership share many common traits; survival and control and self enhancement drive both,” said a House Republican lawmaker, who noted members had been concerned all along that the memorandum would fail. “Midterms are still beyond Trump’s focus zone. Not screwing us might be his goal, but he’s screwing us into political oblivion.”

This place of uncertain progress is where many Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, feared they would end up. The problem is they are now back where they were months ago — with four months left to go before the election.

“It seems as if we are right back to this very sticky and tricky, either war of escalation or drawn-out painful negotiations,” said Matthew Bartlett, Republican strategist and former appointee to the State Department in Trump’s first administration. “We have absolutely no economic message, and now we have a muddled, messy international message.”

Trump threw the curveball on Wednesday, announcing that the ceasefire between the countries was “over” because of Iran’s continued attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military responded by hitting dozens of targets in Iran, and Tehran followed with fresh attacks in the region.

The cracks in the Republican wall of support for Trump have become more apparent, although the president still maintains significant sway over the party. Both the House and Senate approved a resolution last month to halt military operations against Iran with the support of a handful of Republicans, a symbolic but still politically damaging rebuke.

Even some GOP lawmakers who’ve opposed efforts to rein in Trump’s war powers have argued the White House should obtain congressional approval before resuming a full-fledged military campaign against Tehran.

“A lot of people thought the [memorandum of understanding] would quiet this down until the election,” said Elliott Abrams, Trump’s former special representative for Iran. “But the Iranians overplayed their hand. They seem to be saying we want it all, and we want it all now, and he’s not prepared to do that.”

The White House said Trump was fulfilling his promise not to allow Iran to possess a nuclear weapon and ensuring Republicans maintained their majorities in Congress. “As the Iranian terror threat is fully neutralized, Americans will again see cooling inflation, gas prices at multi-year lows, and accelerated economic growth,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Wales.

The breach of the ceasefire has seen a torrid pace of strikes by the U.S. Officials from Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the region, said they have hit at least 170 military targets inside Iran over the last 48 hours “to further degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners.” Iran responded by launching strikes across the Middle East, including at targets in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

A former Trump official said the broken ceasefire was inevitable because the memorandum of understanding “papered over” two key disagreements: the linkage of Lebanon to the Hormuz ceasefire, as well as control over the strait.

“It was highly likely because the deal was politically very unstable,” said the former official, who like some others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “This is the most stable form of a deal.”

A bitter fight over war funding is also brewing. Republicans and Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee took Pentagon officials to task last week over a lack of details on how officials plan to spend $67 billion in supplemental funds the administration requested for the war.

But the wider GOP on Capitol Hill is still divided about the way forward. Some more hawkish Republicans are urging the president to continue with a wide-ranging military campaign to destroy Tehran’s military capability and reopen the strait by force.

“Iran keeps hitting ships and its neighbors,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who said responding to Tehran usurped gas price concerns. “The U.S. should hit them with a clenched fist until they show they want peace.”

House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) on Thursday told Fox Business that Trump is “right to say let’s just finish the job. I think the rest of our allies and partners in the region would appreciate that as well.”

Others worry American voters who watch their energy prices continue to spiral will feel differently.

“All of this makes it tougher for Republicans on the ballot to talk about what voters are saying is most important to them — lowering prices,” said Doug Heye,a former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “It’s why having a strategy would have been helpful, instead of making it up as you go along.”