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Lawmakers are anxious that the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran may not hold, but many are not ready to call for regime change in the Islamic Republic.
President Donald Trump on Monday announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a truce, but as the evening carried into the wee hours of Tuesday morning, whether that peace would last came into question.
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Israel had reportedly geared up for a retaliatory bombing run against Iran, and Trump accused both of breaking the newborn truce. On Tuesday morning, the president put out a sharp reprimand against both countries.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” he told reporters.
On Capitol Hill, in the immediate wake of the ceasefire announcement, lawmakers were already looking at the deal skeptically but had confidence that the president’s negotiating power would ensure the fragile truce was not shattered.
“I remain hopeful,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital. “I trust the president. He’s been right on everything, and he’s the only president that’s been able to bring Iran and Israel to the table in this manner. So I’m going to hope and pray that this works, and if it doesn’t, then we know Trump will act decisively.”
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Trump’s announcement came on the heels of a weekend strikes with bunker-busting bombs that the White House says obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. Many lawmakers stood firm last week that the entire point of supporting Israel in their bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic was to ensure that Iran could not make or obtain an atomic weapon.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital that it was the groundwork Trump laid in his first term with the Abraham Accords and his recent visit to Saudi Arabia that could help solidify a lasting ceasefire between the two sides.
“All you can do is just trust that because of the events that have happened, I mean, Iran … their conventional weapons have been decimated, their platforms have been decimated,” he said. “Their nuclear program has been obliterated. So they’re at the table because of that.”
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital that Iran has “typically never done what they said they would do.”
However, he believed that with the pressure from both the U.S. and Israel, and because Trump was willing to use force — which he described as the president showing he “means business” — things could be different.
“I think they’re going to come to the table now, and they’re in a very weak position, so it’s different, but their track record is very bad,” he said. “You can’t count on what they say. So this goes back to the Reagan ‘trust but verify.’ Anything we negotiate with them has to be verifiable, and certainly that’s how the administration is going to approach it.”
However, even with a ceasefire, the Iranian regime remains unchanged. A shared sentiment among many lawmakers, however, was that if regime change were to take place in Tehran, it would have to be up to the Iranian people, not the U.S. government.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who is pushing for his war powers resolution to get a vote in the upper chamber, warned, “Do we really want to get in another regime-change war?
“We changed Iran’s regime in 1953 by leading a coup against their prime minister,” Kaine said. “And that’s one of the reasons why the U.S.-Iran relationship is so bad 70 years later. Do we really want to do that again?”
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Indeed, the U.S.-backed toppling of then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh opened the door for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to take control of Iran. However, by 1979, the Islamic Revolution took place and removed Pahlavi from power and saw the birth of the current regime.
Rep. Jack Bergman, a retired Marine general, laid out his position against regime change in more succinct terms. “It’s not our role.”
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., lauded the president’s action over the weekend and said he believed the strikes had put negotiations on a path that could lead to a “generational shift” regarding the future peace and stability of the Middle East and Western World.
Still, he noted that “regime changes can break one or two ways, but it would be hard to do worse than what is there today.”
“I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’re not there yet,” he continued.
Not every lawmaker shared the same feelings, however.
Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital that he believed the U.S. should take a stronger posture when it comes to regime change in Iran.
“I’m a Navy SEAL commander who spent time there, and buried a lot of my friends,” he said. “While the attack was brilliant, and it was deceptive, and it made a statement, etcetera, etcetera, I don’t think Iran will bend. I think it’s going to take regime change.”
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