Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) defends U.S. strikes on Iran, arguing a Senate war powers resolution fails to constrain presidential action effectively, instead proposing a 30-day limit for targeted operations against missiles and drones. He dismisses claims of "obliterated" nuclear threats, citing Iran’s ongoing support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and regional destabilization while pursuing nuclear and missile programs. Landsman blames Iran for over 1,000 civilian deaths in recent attacks but contrasts them with U.S. precision strikes, rejecting escalation fears despite calls questioning the legality or strategy. He frames the conflict as a necessary shift to counter Iran’s influence, backed by regional allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while criticizing the administration’s reliance on non-diplomatic figures and failed diplomacy. The debate hinges on balancing military action against Iran’s aggression with congressional oversight and avoiding broader war risks. [Automatically generated summary]
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Joining us now to talk about the latest of the Iran strikes is Congressman Greg Lansman from Ohio, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Congressman, thanks so much.
Thanks for having me.
All right, let's dive right in.
Yesterday, the Senate took an initial vote blocking their version of that war powers resolution that would stop the president from ordering further strikes on Iran and require him to go before Congress.
To do so, the House has set to vote on a similar version today.
You are opposed.
Tell us why.
So we have an alternative war powers resolution, which I think makes much more sense.
It says that you are right.
But that's not what's being voted on.
No, I just go through the differences really quickly.
Ours says no troops.
This is not clearly stating that.
Number two, ours says you got a couple weeks to finish this operation.
This resolution says you got to be done now.
Do not finish the operation.
Ours is very clear about staying in the region in order to defend our troops and our allies.
This is not clear.
So I'll be voting against this one today.
Already failed in the Senate, so it's kind of a moot point, but I think it's important to say: look, this is not good policy.
What's better policy is to allow the military and our allies to finish this particular operation, which has targeted just the missiles and the launchers and the ships.
That's it.
And then be done.
And so that Senate vote failed yesterday, a 47 to 53 margin, roughly around party lines.
Do you believe that after you take this vote today in the House, which you say you're opposed to, that the 30-day measure that you're talking about, will that also get a vote in the near future?
Yeah, it has to ripen.
That's the legislative term.
So in order for it to be a privileged resolution, meaning it comes directly to the floor, time has to pass and it won't be ready until the 24th.
But at that point, I think most people will want to work with us and get that done if it looks like this operation is going to take more than a few weeks or it's changing in any way.
Now, I believe you have about six Democrats, including you, that's leading that second version of a war powers resolution, a more limited version, some would say.
How has leadership responded?
I think they understand the complexity of this and the fact that this is based on my conviction that Iran has posed not just a threat.
Iran's been a chaos machine.
They caused mayhem and violence and they've killed not only their own people, I mean tens of thousands of their own people in January during the protests, but Lebanon, which I believe would be free.
Beirut would be a place that we would be talking about, people would be going to.
They fund Hezbollah, which has destabilized Lebanon.
They're obviously going after Israel.
They fund Hamas in Gaza.
I think the Palestinians would have Gaza on their own with some sort of peace with Israel, but for Iran.
They meddle in Iraq, Syria.
They want this nuclear weapon or enriched uranium so that they can cause more mayhem.
And what they were doing was they were stockpiling or building up their missile capabilities and drones to protect their enrichment activities.
And so the window was closing in terms of our ability to stop them from, one, getting a nuclear weapon, but two, from building up such an air defense and missile capability.
But how does that connect with the president who says that after the B-2 bombers last June, that those nuclear capabilities and their nuclear ambitions were obliterated?
I mean, he continues to say that to the same thing.
Yeah, it was the wrong word.
And, you know, it's frustrating to deal with something so serious and complicated with this president.
Let me be very clear.
I don't trust him.
He has lost the trust that whatever trust he had with the American people, a lot of the American And so it's tough.
But what was true about the strikes was it did enormous damage to their enrichment facilities.
In June.
Yeah.
Sorry.
But they have enriched uranium, and they are trying to build up a shield around that so that they continue to enrich so that they can have a weapons grade, they get to weapons grade levels and they have a weapon that they can either use to destroy, kill hundreds of thousands of people, including Americans, or they start to extort us.
I mean, they start to use that to cause more mayhem and chaos.
I want to ask you more about some of the evidence that you've seen, but to your specific version of that more limited war powers resolution, yesterday Leader Jeffries said that he had not seen it.
Have you spoken with him since?
Have you showed it with him?
Do you know?
We've talked to Leader Jeffries about it and made our case.
He made his case on his position.
But no, I feel very strongly about this.
I mean, I desperately want peace.
I've wanted this since I can remember.
When I was young and I was thinking about what am I going to do, you know, career-wise, I remember very specifically watching Clinton shaking hands with Arafat Rabin.
I was in high school.
And I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do to work in that kind of way.
Not president, but in that crew of solving something so complicated.
And peace, you can pray for it and you can hope for it, but at some point you have to act on it.
And diplomacy is first.
The diplomacy, the diplomatic work was not going anywhere.
I'm happy to get into that.
And then the question is: would a targeted set of strikes help to achieve peace?
I believe the answer is yes.
Now, the president has said that the war could last several weeks.
Looking now at a New York Times headline, it says, Trump says war could last several weeks and offers contradictory visions of new regime.
Pete Hegseth has said it could last four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, two weeks.
So the timeline here is obviously fluctuating.
Your extension would be for 30 days.
That would theoretically be voted on by the 24th.
So 30 days from there.
Are you concerned about the potential for it to go longer?
Yeah, I am, although I'm not terribly concerned at the moment.
I think the objectives, as I understand it, and the way the Secretary of State and others have explained, including the Joint Chiefs.
So I'm listening to the generals.
They're saying the objective is this.
Destroy the air defenses, the missiles, the launchers, the ability to go build more missiles and the drones and then the ships.
That's it.
And so that's the mission.
They're looking at the number of ships and missiles and launchers and where they are and how quickly they can get to them.
And they're saying weeks.
That's it.
And once they're done, they're done.
Let's talk about ground troops for a second because the White House is not ruling it out.
The President is not ruling it out.
I wonder, in your bill, it prohibits a president from deploying ground troops without explicit congressional authority, except for cases of search and rescue missions and intelligence activities.
Talk about why.
Ground troops suggest a different operation, and this operation is limited.
It makes sense.
He has the authority, the administration has the authority to take a limited action without Congress voting, though Congress is going to have to vote on some sort of supplemental to backfill the munitions.
But the ground troops suggest that we would be getting into nation building and regime change, and that's not something I would support.
Well, the president has talked favorably about regime change, although the White House says that that is not one of their four objectives.
He has mused about this idea of regime change.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think everyone in the world would like a different regime, except for China and Russia.
I think we would like to have a regime that is like others in the region, that is wanting to be part of the world, that denounces terrorism, that doesn't fund terrorism, that builds some sort of defense with its partners, right?
That would be great.
I think it is a huge opportunity, but it's not something that the United States should be putting on the list of objectives.
Like, that's not on us.
That is on the Iranian people.
And we can create the conditions by essentially defanging, as Secretary of State Rubio said, getting rid of the military assets of this regime that weakens them to such an extent that, yeah, there could be change.
Now, before we continue our conversation, Congressman, I want to invite more of our viewers to join in on the call.
Let me repeat your lines.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Start calling in.
We'll turn to questions in just a few minutes here.
I want to ask about lawmakers who are growing more concerned about Americans that are effectively stranded in the Middle East.
We know that the administration says that they are working hard to get some of these folks out.
They've already been able to bring home thousands of people and are urging others in the region that want to leave to reach out.
Senator Andy Kim said this week that the number of Americans who need to get out of the region could grow if the war intensifies in countries now being attacked.
He said that up to a million Americans may be at risk.
Do you believe that that is the accurate number and could no?
No.
Why not?
Well, because you only have a few thousand who are saying they're looking to leave now.
And I think this is the heat.
This is the most intensive it's going to be.
Maybe it'll get more intense in the next couple of days, but you're seeing them working through our allies, the United States and our allies working through the launchers, the missiles, the ships, at which point you'll see, I think, less and less conflict and the airspaces starting to open up.
Do you believe that military forces could be required to rescue civilians in the region if you see a more widening, not protracting?
I would hope not.
No.
And I wonder, in your first statement since the attacks on Saturday, you said that these strikes are targeted military infrastructure with warnings to Iranian civilians to take shelter away from these military targets.
But U.S.-based human rights activist news agency said that now more than a thousand civilians have been killed in the first five days since the bombing started.
181 are under the age of 10.
Do you believe that civilian casualties are inevitable?
Gosh, I hate to believe that they're inevitable, especially with the kind of precision that some of this stuff now has.
So I would like to get to a place where it is inevitable.
Well, sorry, not where it is not inevitable.
Every attempt should be taken to not just limit, but to avoid any civilian casualty.
And right now you have Iran indiscriminately, for the most part, launching missiles and rockets and drones, and they are killing civilians.
And it's not just in Israel.
It's not just in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem.
It's in Gulf states.
They just hit an airport in one of the countries for the first time.
So, I mean, they're indiscriminately doing it.
The United States and our allies, very precise.
It should be more precise.
Something that should happen moving forward with all the technology.
But yeah, the civilian deaths are terrible.
No one, I mean, I don't like the idea that any of it is acceptable.
Something That Should Happen00:03:03
I don't.
And have you heard anything else about the school that was hit?
I know that the Department of War said that they are still investigating.
Yeah, they're still investigating.
I keep trying to find out, you know, on my own because it's awful what happened.
It was, you know, the school was right next to a base.
Did the base, this is an Iranian missile silo or base, did the missile backfire and hit the school?
Did somebody shoot at the base and miss the base and hit the school?
Either way, it's awful.
And I got to tell you, it's one of those things that it's hard to think about because it's so, I mean, I've got kids.
They're not that young anymore.
But the idea of, it's just awful.
It's awful.
All right, let's turn to some phone calls.
Billy from Texas, a Democrat.
You're next.
Good morning, Billy.
Good morning.
And I want to commend you all at C-SPAN.
Y'all do a great work because you let the world hear what's going on.
And as far as America, we have to be the world's leader because we've got a lot of people out here in these different nations that are kind of corrupt and crooked.
And that's why America has its role.
And we will continue to do that because we're doing it in the right way.
And we're doing it under the protection and guidance of God.
And I just want to tell everybody that C-SPAN is number one as well.
Thank you, thank you.
All right, Billy.
I'm not sure there was much to respond to there.
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, I think he's right both about C-SPAN and about our role in the world.
I mean, you can either sit back and watch what happens unfold.
And there is a protectionist, you know, isolationism type of sort of thinking emerging in the United States.
And it's happened before.
It happened before World War II where people said, you know, whatever happens in Europe, you know, that happens in Europe, let's just focus on us.
And that is right in the sense that we need our leaders focus on our economy and our public safety and our roads and bridges and those kinds of things.
However, as the world's largest superpower, I think the most significant superpower, we have the ability to make things better around the world.
We should do that.
We should do it with USAID and help get rid of starvation and HIV and AIDS.
And no one should have anything but good drinking water.
And when it comes to these kinds of conflicts, and Iran has been a conflict for decades, we have a role to play to say, look, we can make this better.
We can end this, the chaos and the violence.
That's what I believe our armed forces are doing is they're saying, look, we're going to end this.
And hopefully that creates space for a lasting peace and a transformed Middle East to be able to fly to Dubai.
Imminent Threat in the Middle East00:03:06
I mean, when I was a kid, I took the Euro pass.
I, you know, didn't have much money, but I was able to get over to Europe and do the thing where you go from city to city and you can see a good chunk of Europe.
I want to be able to do the same in the Middle East.
I want to be able to go to Dubai and then go to Tehran and then go to Damascus and then Beirut and Tel Aviv and Gaza City and Cairo.
Like that's the future of the Middle East if we can sideline Iran.
Yeah, I think that there are very few people who are saying that they don't want to see a better Iran.
I think that the question that you guys are discussing on Congress is about what was this imminent threat or pretext for the president to launch what you say is a limited strike.
And I wonder something that the White House said yesterday was that the president had a feeling based on a fact that there was going to be an imminent threat.
And I wonder, do you know what that fact is?
Have you seen that fact in evidence?
Yeah, well, I don't know what he's talking.
I mean, this is part of the challenge of doing this with Trump.
But if you listen just to Kane and the generals, it's very clear.
What was happening was they wanted to enrich uranium.
They wanted to do it underground.
Those were red lines for them in the negotiations.
They wanted to keep their ballistic missile program.
They wanted to continue to fund terrorism.
Those were all red lines.
So then what they saw, our folks saw, was the hemming and hawing, the sort of extending out of the diplomatic talks, building up their missile defense, ballistic missile capabilities and their drones.
So they were getting to a place where it would have become increasingly difficult to go in and do what we're doing right now, which is stop them from ever enriching the kind of uranium that would lead to a big bomb.
So there was a threat, but you're saying you don't know if it was imminent.
I mean, imminent is a question, right?
Like imminent in the sense that did they have their finger on the trigger?
I don't know.
Were they building this back up so that they could attack?
100%.
So if you know somebody's going to attack, you just don't know when, don't you go in and say, look, I'm not going to let you do this.
I mean, I think this is one where it does require a certain level of toughness and conviction about what you believe to say, look, I don't want to go do this.
I'd rather not do this.
I'd rather have Iran and the regime be a peaceful nation that is cooperating like everybody else in the world order.
But I don't have that here.
And I don't want this to continue for another 30 or 40 years.
I want, because I think there's a window here, to get rid of these weapons.
President Trump's Impact00:12:20
And I think I can.
I'm told I can.
This is, I think, you know, if I'm sitting in the Oval Office, I'm told I can.
It's limited.
Do it, get it done, be done.
And hopefully that leads to some big transformation in the Middle East.
Okay, Joey from Columbus, Ohio, a Republican.
Good morning, Joey.
Hi.
Nice to talk to you, Mr. Lansman.
As a Buckeye, if I close my eyes, I'm almost amazed because it sounds like I'm listening to a Republican in the way you're talking about this effort.
I missed the first couple minutes, but to be honest, you know, before today, I had wanted to see you gerrymandered out of existence.
But are you saying that you support what Trump is doing in the initiative in here and you're going to vote that way, like against your party?
You know, Mr. Hakeem got in front of a microphone the other day and said that he was expecting this to end in failure, which I found in a horrible thing to say while our men and women are in harm's way.
I'm just curious to how you're going to vote, maybe.
Yeah, I support the operation.
I think the president has to come to Congress if it is going to change, if the operation changes and/or it goes on for more than a few weeks.
And certainly if there are ground troops, he's got to come to Congress.
But in terms of whether or not I support the operation, I do support this operation, which is limited, strategic, and I think the right thing to do.
And we'll be voting no today.
Okay, Jesse from Maryland, a Democrat.
You're next.
Good morning, Jesse.
Now, did I even hear him say he agrees with what Trump does?
I agree with the operation.
Yeah, I do not support this president.
Let me say this.
So if Trump wasn't so gung-ho and firing everybody and cutting special people off in special places, then he wouldn't have to rely on his, or we would have to rely on his feelings that might have attacked.
We would know for a fact that we'll be in attack.
Now, he doesn't destroy President Hess Country over here for his feelings.
Can you repeat it?
Sorry.
Jesse, can you speak a little bit more clearly into the phone?
They're having a trouble hearing you.
I was saying he was saying that he agreed with Trump doing.
Yes, we can hear you now.
Yeah, if it were me, this is the way sometimes I try to sort through a question like this.
If I were given the same option, would I have made the same decision?
And in this case, I would have made the same decision, which is this is a limited but aggressive set of strikes that could defang the regime's and to end the regime's ability to cause mayhem, chaos, violence, which they've been causing for years, if not decades.
I would have made that same call.
So I can't turn around and then say I oppose it.
That would be political or disingenuous, dishonest.
Do I believe in our constitutional democracy where you got to come to Congress?
Absolutely.
I was glad that they started to, they returned to this practice of briefing Democrats and Republicans.
They came and briefed everybody a couple days ago.
I was in that briefing.
And if this thing goes beyond the initial limited set of strikes, as aggressive as they are, he's got to come to Congress for a vote.
I believe that.
Now, I want to ask, because I know you're saying that these are limited, but there is reporting that obviously it is widening out outside of Iran.
We kind of talked about it a little bit earlier.
But this Axios piece I'm looking at now, the headline is, here are all the countries now involved in the Iran conflict.
I'm going to scroll real quickly, but they obviously say the U.S., Israel, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Cyprus, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Obviously, there are not strikes in all these places, clearly.
But are you concerned about it widening out to more of the Middle East if this is not as limited as the White House has been?
our strikes are limited i mean our strikes are very targeted and and and and right but iran's are not No, Iran's are not.
But remember, you know, every few hours, they're losing launchers, they're losing missiles.
So their ability to cause more damage lessens.
The widening here with all of those countries, that's all anti-Iran.
Those are all folks jumping in to say we're done.
We see an opportunity to be done with 40 years of this.
And they want a very different Middle East.
That's what they've been working on for years with the Abraham Accords and all of the work to get the World Cup and be part of the world community.
They want to have their countries back, their region back, and they want to be part of the world.
And so they're stepping up and saying, well, maybe this is the opportunity.
Craig from Ohio, an independent, you're next.
Craig, you're on the line?
I'm going to ask you one more time.
It's got a great name.
Mary from Philadelphia, a Democrat, you're next.
Hi.
I was just wanting to respond to, you said diplomacy was going nowhere.
From what I understand and from what I saw, I don't know who said it, but they said that there were no diplomats at the table.
There was Jared Kushner and Witkoff.
They're not diplomats.
They do got rid of, and the Trump administration got rid of most of the people that were in that department.
So then you're saying that basically this war started because you want Iran to be a tourist destination?
No, I want Iran to be free.
Well, that's so and nobody wants to live under a regime as horrible as the Ayatollah, I imagine.
And I know someone who left Iran, and she and her husband are here.
And they had to go back last year.
And it was very scary to hear that they had to go back to settle some family things.
I have a nephew that was in Iraq, did a few tours in Iraq.
I have a nephew that guarded the Israeli embassy.
You know, there's not anything.
So I'm not pro-Iran.
I'm just saying the way this came down, it seems very, you know, knowing that the president is a quid-pro quo kind of guy, you know, put a bar of gold on the desk and you got a deal.
So maybe sending two real estate developers to do some diplomacy wasn't a great idea.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with the issues with this president and his trustworthiness or his lack of, or the fact that he's just, he seems to be mostly interested in money and the, you know, the transactions, as you mentioned, that seems to be his priority.
I don't disagree.
That is one of my biggest complaints about this administration.
It's just how corrupt it's become.
And then you have this question of why is Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading this?
I've been pushing on this for over a year.
They have to have a huge diplomatic team of actual professionals, not just in Iran, but as it relates to Ukraine and China.
Like, this is a huge moment in global history.
This is absurd that it's coming down to people that do business with and or are related to Donald Trump.
That said, we do have other folks in the room who were part of the diplomacy.
There were red lines.
They wanted to continue to enrich underground.
Can't do that.
They wanted to keep their ballistic missile program and continue to stockpile and build that up.
I don't think you can do that.
I think that should have been a red line for us, and I'm glad it was a red line.
They want to continue to fund terror in the region and upend stability and the prospect of peace in Lebanon and in Gaza, Syria, Iraq.
That was a red line.
Joel from Massachusetts and Independent.
You're next.
Good morning, Joel.
Representative Landsman, do the Republicans realize that the war with Iran affects Russia and China?
It stops China from getting oil, and it stops Russia from getting drones for Iran to use against Russia to use against Ukraine in the Ukrainian war.
Yeah, I mean, you know, look, Iran's really only had two allies here, Russia and China.
And, you know, Russia has been preoccupied, if you will, in Ukraine, and it's one of the reasons why this window was a window.
They're not there.
It's why Syria fell in many ways, because Syria had Iran to help them when times got tough, or sorry, Russia.
And Russia wasn't there to help folks in Damascus.
And that's one of the reasons why the Syrian regime fell.
And it may be one of the reasons why this regime falls here or it fundamentally transforms into something that the world can work with, which is ideal.
Tony from Reading, Pennsylvania, a Republican.
You're next.
Good morning, Tony.
Good morning.
I totally support President Trump.
I think he did the right thing.
As we always know, Iran has always been hollering and screaming, death to America, death to Israel.
It was about time that we had a strong president like President Trump to take action against them.
This was an ongoing thing.
And I would have to say that 90% of President Trump's term this time is cleaning up the mess that Joe Biden left behind.
Biden gave $6 billion to Iran, lifted sanctions.
And what did Iran do?
Take that money, give it to their proxies, and they attacked Israel.
That's why we're in the situation we're in now.
Of course, Iran has always been a serious threat to us, but with the previous administration helping them along, you can see what happened.
They attacked Israel.
And I would also like to say we need a strong president like President Trump.
And I will say this to you, Representative.
I am very proud to see a Democrat that has a brain, that has common sense.
And on the Senate side, I'm very proud of my own senator, Senator Fetterman, that he also has common sense.
He doesn't have to agree.
You don't have to agree with all that any president does, and including President Trump.
But I love seeing that you have common sense and you take it apart and look at the issues individually.
Operation Underway00:01:10
All right, Tony, we're coming up on time here, so I'm going to let the Congresswoman respond to your points there.
Well, I do think we need strong leadership across the board.
And I don't think our Iran policy has worked.
I do think that you do diplomacy first, but they have reacted better when you show them strength, when you show them that there are consequences.
And I am glad that this operation is underway.
I do want it to be successful, and then I want it to end.
I don't want it to become something else.
And I think it was the right call.
And I do agree that elected officials should break these things down based on the facts and then say what they believe is true, having talked mostly with their constituents, the people they represent, because we represent a certain group of folks, and those come first.