The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a second Democratic-led effort to curb President Donald Trump’s military operations against Iran, voting 48-53 against a war powers resolution introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
The vote fell largely along party lines. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) crossed over to support the measure, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) broke with most Democrats to oppose it. A similar resolution sponsored earlier by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) had also failed.
Booker’s resolution cited the administration’s “massive and ongoing” military activities in Iran and argued that Congress had been sidelined as the conflict intensified. It would have required the president to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in or against Iran unless explicitly authorized by Congress through a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force. No such authorization currently exists for operations in Iran.
Additional Democratic senators are expected to introduce more war powers measures in the coming days, forcing repeated votes to compel lawmakers to take a public stand on the issue, according to reports. A related effort in the House also failed.
Presidents of both parties have long viewed the 1973 War Powers Resolution—passed in the final stages of the Vietnam War—as an unconstitutional constraint on the commander-in-chief’s Article II authority. The law has never been fully tested in the Supreme Court.
Fetterman has consistently defied his party on this issue. He opposed the previous Senate attempt two weeks ago and voiced strong support for the U.S.-Israeli campaign. In interviews, he described Trump’s actions to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and target regime leadership as “entirely appropriate.” He urged continued strikes against Iranian leaders, including any successor to the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stating, “Just keep killing them until they’re gone” until a leadership emerges willing to coexist peacefully and cease threats against Israel and the region.
Khamenei, who ruled Iran for over three decades, was killed in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting his compound and key elements of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. International media reports indicate that Iran’s Assembly of Experts selected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as successor on Tuesday. However, uncertainty surrounds his status, with some accounts suggesting he may have been injured or neutralized in subsequent strikes on a meeting site in Qom.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that any leader appointed by the regime would be “an unequivocal target for elimination.” “It does not matter what his name is or the place where he hides,” Katz posted on X. He added that Israel and the United States would continue operations “with full force” to degrade the regime’s capabilities and create conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow it.
Israel has explicitly pursued regime change in Iran through its military campaign. U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have framed the mission more narrowly around eliminating nuclear and missile threats. President Trump has publicly encouraged the Iranian people to “take over” their government, though the administration has emphasized that large-scale nation-building is not part of its objectives.
Supporters of the war powers resolutions acknowledged the steep odds, given strong Republican backing for the operations in a Congress controlled by the president’s party. Still, they argued the votes serve an important purpose: testing where individual lawmakers stand on congressional oversight of military action and highlighting Trump’s resistance to seeking formal approval.
The repeated failed votes underscore ongoing tensions between the executive and legislative branches over war-making authority amid the evolving conflict with Iran.
