Republican Support for Trump’s Iran War Is Wobbling

As Congress prepares to depart for a two-week spring recess, the U.S. Defense Department has yet to send its formal proposal for emergency Iran war-related funding, even as a request of around $200 billion has been widely reported in recent days.

With Democrats nearly unanimous in their opposition to funding the war that their voters overwhelmingly detest, there is growing talk among Republicans about including the Iran war funding in a partisan “reconciliation” spending bill that wouldn’t rely on Democratic votes.

“If we do a reconciliation bill, yes, it would need to be done quickly, and the Iran money would be in there,” said Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

However, it would still be very tricky to pass due to strict procedural rules and general lawmaker nervousness about spending billions on an unpopular war months ahead of midterm voting.

It’s also unlikely all Republicans would back the measure, as there are increasing signs of Republican discontent on Capitol Hill even as the dam continues to hold against a major party break with Trump. With both the Senate and House closely divided along party lines, the White House can afford to lose only a few Republican votes in each chamber on a partisan reconciliation bill.

Multiple Republican senators criticized the Trump administration’s decision to grant monthlong waivers from U.S. sanctions for purchases of Russian and Iranian oil that is already at sea. The administration is hoping the sanctions relief will lead to lower prices at the gas pump for U.S. consumers despite estimates that Moscow and Tehran stand to earn billions from the temporary reprieve.

“It makes no sense to provide financial relief to a country that we’re currently fighting. The impacts of these waivers will be immediate. Russia can now more easily fund its war machine,” said Sen. Jerry Moran in a Tuesday floor speech. “The waivers signal desperation to the Iranian regime and reinforces that their strategy of taking the Strait of Hormuz hostage is working.”

Sen. John Kennedy told reporters he “hated” the sanctions waivers.

“I’m not saying that the president made the wrong decision, because I don’t have the information that he has, but it breaks my heart to see us remove sanctions on Iranian oil and on Russian oil,” Kennedy said.

And Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said the sanctions relief was “helping our adversaries again. I get they’re trying to manage some of the supply shocks, but it’s concerning to me.”

Democrats were even more scathing in their criticism of the Iran sanctions relief.

“Waging war on a regime while simultaneously enabling it to increase oil profits by lifting sanctions makes zero sense and reaches new levels of incoherence,” said a joint Thursday statement by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democratic leaders of key national security-related committees. “This looks less like a plan and more like a panicked move that benefits our adversaries while leaving the American people to bear the cost.”

Republicans have also grown more willing to complain about the lack of a consistent and clear strategy from the administration on its objectives with Iran and its plan for achieving them.

For instance, on Tuesday, Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said “not yet” when asked if he felt it was time for Congress to debate and vote on a new authorization for military force to domestically legalize operations against Iran. “This is not something new. This is what’s already been talked about.”

News shortly followed that Trump had ordered 2,000 additional combat troops deployed to the Middle East, bringing to almost 7,000 the number of ground troops the president has recently dispatched to the region.

Rounds sounded less sanguine on Wednesday when he left a classified Iran briefing, telling reporters that senators are waiting for more information about how much the war against Iran is costing. “Our oversight responsibilities are important, and as part of that, we continue to remind them that we expect to get good answers,” he said.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace sounded even more aggrieved following a House classified briefing.

“Just walked out of a House Armed Services briefing on Iran. Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing,” she wrote in a Wednesday post on X.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Mike Rogers, told reporters after the briefing that “we want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered, and we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.”

Several other Republican senators have reportedly also raised concerns behind closed doors about the lack of specific cost details that Defense Department officials would share with them at their classified briefing.

A possible $200 billion Iran war spending bill would likely be hard for Republican lawmakers to digest given the war’s domestic unpopularity and polling showing that voters are prioritizing policies that bring down the cost of living. (In comparison, U.S. taxpayer support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion totals about $188 billion, though that war has a broader base of U.S. bipartisan support and has been spread out over multiple years.)

The strains in Trump’s party support for his overseas adventurism aren’t helped by increasingly grim domestic polling that shows Republicans seriously underwater when it comes to generic support for their party versus Democrats ahead of the fall midterms. And while roughly half of surveyed Republicans in a new Associated Press poll believe U.S. military actions against Iran have been “about right,” that party support drops to about one-fifth when asked about support for ramped-up U.S. military involvement against Iran.

“The numbers that they’re talking about are pretty staggering in the sense of what they say about how long this is going to go on,” said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine on Tuesday of the expected Iran war spending request.

For the last month, Kaine has been leading an effort in the Senate to hold regular war powers votes challenging the legality of Trump’s military attacks on Iran as a means of pressuring Republican leaders to insist that senior Trump administration officials publicly testify and submit to lawmaker questions about the Iran war.

But only Republican Sen. Rand Paul broke with his party on the most recent procedural war powers vote on Tuesday, continuing the voting pattern established since Trump first launched the war nearly a month ago.

“I get it, why Republicans don’t want to have a debate about an authorization,” Kaine said. “Any Republican who would vote for an authorization for this war under these circumstances would get absolutely roasted by their constituents.”