Senators unable to detect any Trump exit strategy from Iran war

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump’s Iran war enters its third week with the Islamic Republic government still intact, lawmakers from both parties say they have not heard administration officials describe an exit strategy.

The commander in chief on Sunday night again contended that the U.S. and Israel have “essentially defeated Iran.” But the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for oil tanker ships, remains mostly closed and the Iranian government remains in power.

“I think I just say they’re decimated,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “I think that we’ve done damage to them. Right now, if we left right now, it would take them 10 years at war to rebuild. But I’m still not declaring it over.”

On Monday, Trump described Iran as a “paper tiger,” saying its air force and navy are “gone.” During an unrelated event at the White House, Trump said the U.S. military has hit more than 7,000 “commercial and military targets” inside the country. He said Iran’s manufacturing for missiles and drones had been reduced, and threatened to target its oil pipelines.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that Trump would decide when Iran was in a state of “unconventional surrender.” On Friday, the president told Fox News Radio that he would know when to end the war based on a feeling “in my bones.”

One possible pathway to ending the bombardment would be a deal with Iran’s new leadership — if it survives U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. But Trump gave talk of a peace pact a chilly reception Sunday night.

“I don’t know that I want to make a deal because you know what? First of all, nobody even knows who you’re dealing with because most of their leadership has been killed, as you know, right? So I don’t even know that we want to make a deal,” he said.

In June 2019, during Trump’s first term, a CQ Roll Call reporter asked him as he mulled military action against Iran during his first term: “Do you have an exit strategy for Iran, if war does break out?” The president replied, “You’re not going to need an exit strategy. I don’t do exit strategies.”

Fast forward nearly seven years, and Trump 2.0 has boldly gone where Trump 1.0 never did with his air war that, along with Israel’s help, killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But he has sounded as vague about how to get out of the conflict as he did seven years ago, frustrating some Democratic lawmakers.

“This is absolutely absurd that they have started this war. They have no clear metrics by which to determine what the off-ramp is, and the president feels like he’s able to just literally do whatever he wants,” said Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who was a senior civilian adviser to commanders in Afghanistan.

“The service members deserve better. They deserve to have some sense of what is the goal and the objective. What is it that they need to accomplish to be able to get home to their families? And he’s doing a disservice if he thinks that he can just do whatever he wants and not clue the service members into this as they’re trying to understand what they’re being put into harm’s way for,” Kim said.

‘A lot of chaos’

Some observers have speculated, based on Trump’s and Leavitt’s remarks, that the president could one day simply declare victory and order the operation to end.

“He could do that,” Kim said of an out-of-the-blue end to the conflict. “He could, one day, just say, ‘I’ve authorized service members on the ground in Iran.’ Or he could say, ‘I authorized them to increase strikes,’ or to have naval vessels escorting every ship through this Strait of Hormuz. That’s what is so unnerving about this — no single person should be able to make this decision on behalf of the American people.”

Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman said administration officials, in conversations and briefings with lawmakers, have “outlined a number of points that they want to achieve.” But he did not mention any plans for a possible exit strategy.

“The ability to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons, and then also their ability to continue making and stockpiling these large ballistic missiles that have tremendous range. So those are the main things,” said Boozman, a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. “They’ve also talked about regime change, to some degree. But those are the primary things that they’re trying to do, prevent their ability to wage war.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said administration officials did not describe a possible exit strategy during a closed-door briefing last week.

“I want it to end as promptly as it can. Sure would be great for our troops, great for the region,” Kaine said. “At some point, I think President Trump will just say, ‘We did what we wanted’ and depart. But there will be a lot of chaos in its wake that ... could have a very long set of consequences. That’s what I worry about.”

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring Republican who has pushed back on some of Trump’s policies, said last week that his main concern is America leaving too abruptly and creating a power vacuum inside Iran.

“What I’m worried about is a precipitous exit before we have any on-ramp for reform. I mean, we’ve had the ayatollah’s son sworn in. I think in some respects he could even be worse than his father,” Tillis said, referring to the late supreme leader, who was killed on the war’s first day, and his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.

“I don’t believe it’s a good idea to just have a precipitous exit. I think there are a lot of things that could happen to the Iranian people and the retribution that would come from this regime,” he added. “So I think that we have to have an after strategy, after hostilities, to make sure that we’re just not leaving them out there and not able to regroup.”

To that end, Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote that “Mojtaba Khamenei must decide whether the Islamic Republic will continue along the strategic trajectory defined by his father or whether the pressures now bearing down on the system will force a more fundamental reconsideration of Iran’s political and foreign-policy orientation.”

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