By Patricia Zengerle, Nolan D. McCaskill and David Morgan
WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's Republicans insisted on Monday that the attack on Iran was fully within his authority as commander in chief, while Democrats said the administration has not made its case and planned a war powers vote this week.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff briefed congressional leaders about the strikes on Iran, two days after Israeli and U.S. forces began bombing the Islamic state.
Going into the briefing, Rubio told reporters that there was an imminent threat to the United States because the U.S. knew that Israel planned to attack Iran and expected Iran to retaliate by attacking U.S. forces.
Republican lawmakers said that led to the "imminent threat" that forced the U.S. to respond.
"Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration ... had a very difficult decision to make," House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the classified briefing.
"In my view, right now ... our military and the commander in chief, he is presiding over the completion of an operation that was limited in scope, limited in its objective, and absolutely necessary for our defense. I think that operation will be wound up quickly," Johnson said.
Democrats argued that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the sole right to declare war and that Trump should not have embarked on what he said could be a weeks-long campaign without lawmakers' approval.
They also faulted the administration for failing to present a consistent argument for attacking Iran now, and questioned whether U.S. interests were dictating policy.
'AMERICAN INTERESTS'
Within a week, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said, the administration has given a wide range of reasons for attacking Iran, first destroying its nuclear program, then ending its ballistic missile development, changing its regime and now sinking its naval fleet.
But Trump's top aides have not made a convincing case that the U.S. faced an immediate threat, he said.
"I stand firmly with Israel. But I believe at the end of the day, when we are talking about putting American soldiers in harm's way, when we have American casualties and expectations of more, there needs to be the proof of an imminent threat to American interests. I still don't think that standard has been met," Warner said.
By Monday evening, six U.S. service members had been killed in the conflict.
Trump administration officials will return to the Capitol on Tuesday to brief the full Senate and House of Representatives.
Later in the week, lawmakers are expected to vote on war powers resolutions that could block Trump from continuing to attack Iran without a congressional declaration of war.
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to send U.S. troops to war, except for limited strikes for national security reasons.
However, Trump's Republicans hold slim margins in both the House and Senate and even though a few Republicans have joined Democrats in supporting war powers resolutions, his party has blocked every effort so far to force him to obtain lawmakers' approval for military action.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Nolan D. McCaskill and David Morgan, additional reporting by Ryan Jones; editing by Stephen Coates)
