As Iran chokes off oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and sends gas prices soaring, Republicans in Congress are standing firmly behind President Donald Trump, insisting that the administration anticipated the standoff and has a plan.
“Do you not think that they knew this and had a strategy? Of course they did,” Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.V., told MS NOW on Tuesday.
With the Iran war entering its third week, the Strait of Hormuz has become the central front of the conflict. Iran has effectively cut off all traffic in the strait, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas flows each year. And the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. has now jumped by almost $1 over the past month, according to AAA.
But as Republicans defend the president and insist that he has a strategy, Trump’s own shifting message on the strait has made it difficult to pin down exactly what that strategy is.
Over the weekend, Trump called for other countries to send warships to help secure the waterway.
“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships,” he posted online Saturday. He echoed the sentiment Sunday, telling reporters, “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory.”
But those countries roundly dismissed the request, and by Tuesday, the president reversed course. “We don’t need too much help, and we don’t need any help,” he said.
The president’s decision to ask for help retroactively stands in stark contrast to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when the Bush administration actively worked to build coalitions with NATO allies before launching its military campaigns in the Middle East.
Republicans in Congress insisted that the president didn’t make a miscalculation about the potential fallout, especially in the strait. But their defenses of Trump ran the gamut — and came as the president’s own public comments about what he intends to do with the strait oscillate between indifference and threats of total annihilation.
Some, like Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., insisted that the president could not gather allies before the conflict because it would have amounted to tipping his hand to Iran.
“They needed that surprise first-strike capability,” he said. “Otherwise, all of our friends in the Middle East would have suffered a lot more than they have so far.”
(Of course, in advance of the attack, the U.S. deployed the largest force of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, according to The Associated Press.)
Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., praised the president’s decision to call for a coalition of nations to “keep a key waterway open for international trade.”
But when MS NOW asked if the president should have prepared that coalition beforehand, LaLota — a Navy veteran — did not directly answer the question.
“The Iranians are wrong to mine an international strait. It’s a violation of international law to do so,” LaLota said.
“Everybody in the international community should want to join together to fight that,” he added.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., predicted that in a “reasonable amount of time” the U.S. will “figure out a way to make the strait more secure.”
But asked whether the president should have tried to gather a coalition of the willing sooner, he instead attacked European leaders, including the prime minister of the United Kingdom, for not heeding Trump’s request.
“Keir Starmer is a major-league wiener,” Kennedy told reporters on Tuesday. “Oh, his feelings are hurt? He should fill out a hurt feelings report. And then let’s move on. We’re in a war.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisted that the reason the Strait of Hormuz remains an issue is a matter of prioritization. The Trump administration, he said, focused on long-range weapons first.
“The weapons that can threaten Hormuz can be very crude and rudimentary rockets, for instance,” Cotton said Tuesday. “There’ll be a time for those, and that time is coming.”
Other Republicans, when asked about the strait, diverted to defending the Iran conflict overall — while insisting that it would not last forever.
“The president has done his job. He’s protecting Americans,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said. And Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Trump “made the right decision when he said that we needed to address the issue in Iran.” “I know that there are multiple plans out there about how to address it,” Rounds said. “I think we got a couple more weeks to go yet.” Not every Republican, however, was so convinced that the White House had anticipated Iran closing the strait. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told MS NOW that “we have to believe” the White House had a strategy when it came to the Strait of Hormuz. “You cannot take on a war with Iran without thinking through the implications of what it means to attack an OPEC nation and disrupt the flow of oil,” she said. Murkowski praised some of the efforts to gather coalition partners to help manage the current turmoil in the strait as “positive.” But, she said, “one would think that you would have kind of given a heads-up to friends and allies” that “you might need a little help.” Did she think that happened? “I don’t know, I wish I did know,” she told MS NOW. Democrats, meanwhile, are warning that the current chaos in the strait could last months and leave gas prices markedly higher — and they are attributing those downstream effects to poor planning from the Trump White House. “We all pay the price for that lack of strategy, including on the Strait of Hormuz,” Rep. Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat and an Iraq War veteran, said. “There’s a reason that presidents of both parties for multiple decades have not started wars with Iran,” he said. “It’s a host of pretty much all bad options.” And Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told MS NOW that the “best case” scenario right now for an off-ramp to the situation in the strait is that the “Iranians stop targeting tankers.” But that, he admitted, is a decision that the Iranians have a say in. Mychael Schnell contributed to this report.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
